In 1974, the famed filmmaker interviewed his parents and turned it into a documentary film. I thought I was sitting in the room with my own Italian grandparents. Oh the stories! I could listen to Catherine Scorsese talk all day. […]
Archives for July 2023
What is popular this week at Current?
Here are the most popular features of the week at Current: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Arena blog:
BOOK MARKS: The Mysterious Survival of the Written Word
“Whenever I am in Southwold, the Sailors’ Reading Room is by far my favourite haunt. It is better than anywhere else for reading, writing letters, following one’s thoughts . . .”
Doctorversary
Fifteen years ago this week, I sat in a majestic seminar room in Princeton, NJ, with a phone to my left, the rest of my dissertation committee and other faculty members all around the rectangular table, as I defended my […]
The House Freedom Caucus boots Marjorie Taylor Greene
Apparently the Trumpiest wing of the GOP doesn’t like their fellow Trumpers calling Lauren Boebert a “little bitch.” Here is Politico: Why was Greene removed? Though tensions were already brewing within the Freedom Caucus, the formal vote came shortly after Greene […]
Mike Pence responds to an election denier at an Iowa Pizza Ranch
Mike Pence ran into an election denier at a Sioux City, Iowa Pizza Ranch. (As a north Jersey kid who is half Italian I can’t get my head around the idea of a “Pizza Ranch”–but I digress). She told Pence […]
“The Bartons are surrounded by tools but that fact doesn’t make them historians anymore than my tool collection makes me a mechanic.”Â
Warren Throckmorton on David Barton, Tim Barton, and Wallbuilders: I have tools and gadgets and parts that I don’t know how to use. Some of those tools are left over from my dad and some seem to have just appeared […]
We have a cover!
The cover of the second edition of Why Study History : Reflecting on the Importance of the Past is here! The book will be available in early 2024.
Arthur Brooks: “Google isn’t grad school”
According to public intellectual Arthur Brooks, the internet has created “an explosion of nonsense.” He’s right. Let’s take my discipline of American history for example. If you read this blog, you know that there is a lot of bad history […]
John McWhorter on affirmative action
Reading McWhorter’s piece today at The New York Times reminds me of the first time I read Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory twenty years ago. The only difference is that McWhorter took the Ivy League job and Rodriguez turned it […]
Evangelical roundup for July 6, 2023
What’s happening in Evangelical land? Latino evangelicals are backing Ron DeSantis despite his views on immigration. An evangelical building interfaith bridges with Mormons. Karen Swallow Prior’s career and the Southern Baptist Convention. In my view, she has been an essential […]
REVIEW: Men and Women in Love with God
Renunciation is the pathway to our deepest longing, says Zena Hitz
Ideas in progress: David McFarland on the teaching life
David McFarland leads a busy life, to use an understatement. He is a high school humanities teacher at Pacific Academy, an IB World School in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. He teaches Social Studies, IB History and Theory of Knowledge, and […]
Stephanie Murray on parenting at The Atlantic today
Balancing childhood independence with childhood safety has been much on parents’ minds lately, as evidenced by the recent Reasonable Childhood Independence laws that have been passed in seven states in recent years, including Virginia, Illinois, and Connecticut in 2023. Yet […]
Daniel K. Williams is the new Director of Teacher Programs at The Ashbrook Center at Ashland University
A big congratulations to Current contributing editor Daniel K. Williams who was just appointed the Director of Teacher Programs at The Ashbrook Center at Ashland University. Dan is leaving his post at the University of West Georgia to assume the […]
The Author’s Corner with Hajar Yazdiha
Hajar Yazdiha is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. This interview is based on her new book, The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton University Press, […]
Love in the Time of Hawkweed
Hail to the weed that rides the coattails of human ambition (and of Star Wars, too)
Another reminder to be a generous reader
In the course of teaching college classes, I encounter all kinds of readers among my students. Some don’t like to read, some love to read. Some are overly accepting of everything in print. Some are the opposite. Occasionally, a student […]
Song of the Day
Commonplace Book #274
The Twitter mob in too many ways defines the current Internet. The objective of the mob is to stamp out apostasy. We are righteous. We are correct. We conform to the current patterns of behavior–and you’d better too. Ultimately, what […]