The revelatory power of hoards—both ancient and modern
The future of evangelical scholars (and their scholarship too)
A year ago, a welcome second edition appeared of that most articulate of jeremiads (as it has been frequently dubbed) about the state of the evangelical mind and (related) evangelical scholarship: Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The […]
The Baptist President you (probably) never knew was a Baptist
Years ago, a former colleague of mine and Dan’s at the University of West Georgia said something nice about President Warren Harding in a lecture that inspired students and colleagues to troll him for years thereafter. A President Harding bobblehead […]
Bret Devereaux on Sparta in Foreign Policy
Ancient military historian Bret Devereaux has a piece on modern fascination with Sparta in Foreign Policy that is very well worth reading. Ancient historians have argued for a while, indeed, that idealizing Sparta is bad history, but in this essay, […]
Summer reading week at the Arena, 07/24-07/28
Earlier this month, the Williams family moved from Carrollton, Georgia, our home for thirteen years (for me) and eighteen years (for Dan), to Ashland, Ohio. Our earthly possessions will rejoin us in the coming week (hooray for books and furniture!). […]
The best road trip novel you’ve never read (probably)
A young man, bored with his life and searching for excitement, takes a road trip. He gets much more excitement, however, than he had bargained for, when his new girlfriend accidentally turns him into a donkey by smearing the wrong […]
Unschooling: homeschooling gone wild(er)
A few years ago, there was a massive row among the parents in one of the local homeschool co-ops we knew about, and it ended with the dissolution of the group. I heard about it a while later from one […]
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (and some not funny things too)
In the opening number of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, made into a film by the same name in 1966, the narrator/protagonist does his best to excite the audience about the […]
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 […]
Reflections on Dorothy Sayers’ work, life, and lost motherhood
I first heard about Dorothy Sayers a little over a decade ago. Knowing of my appreciation for Agatha Christie mysteries, my now husband recommended Sayers’ Peter Wimsey novels. I did not follow up on that recommendation at the time. A […]
Belarus, Ukraine, Russia: an eclectic reading list
The events of this past weekend had a number of Cold War and Russian history and politics experts excitedly feeling relevant. What exactly happened and what does it mean? I appreciated this analysis from Tom Nichols at The Atlantic. In […]
History News Network: updated
Since this post first went live on the morning of 06/23, I have received additional information that is much more encouraging than what was communicated originally. Thus I am updating this post with the welcome news that efforts to re-home […]
Oh the Places We Went: The Playground Crawl
It’s an epic in the making
Dictators R Us
It’s been a good PR spring and summer for dictators, old and new. Earlier in the spring, an article in the American Conservative waxed poetically over Vlad the Impaler’s leadership lessons for the rest of us. Some conservatives, in the […]
Happy Father’s Day!
He has paced the living room for hours on many a night over the years, comforting a fussy baby. The babies are not babies anymore, but he is still their favorite book reader, bath giver, Monopoly player, waffle server, and […]
What I am reading: A new book on Thoreau the worker
Review: Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living by John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle. Princeton University Press, 2023. 232 pp., $27.95 For three years in the 1920s, students and faculty at the University of Mississippi who needed to […]
Plants and blogs
Every once and a while over the years, a well-meaning friend will gift me a plant. The beautiful living gift is usually accompanied by words of assurance: “it is so easy to take care of it” or “it’s truly unkillable” […]
Of mushrooms, arsenic, and pea protein powder
On a trip earlier this spring, Dan overheard a curious conversation at the airport. One woman was passionately advocating for a natural lifestyle to another while awaiting the boarding process to begin. Firmly opposed to all vaccines and caffeine (“it’s […]
INTERVIEW: Francis Gary Powers, Jr. on the 1960 U-2 Incident
The son of CIA pilot Gary Powers has a story to tell—and a history to preserve
Ideas in progress: Telling stories of hope that defeats death
Early in Sophocles’s tragedy Antigone (ca. 441 BCE), the chorus of Theban elders, men well acquainted with the sorrowful history of the city and its divinely cursed royal house, take a brief breather from talking doom and gloom—this is, after […]