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The Erosion of Sin

John Wilson

Readers of the April issue of First Things will have seen James F. Keating’s learned and perceptive review of James M. O’Toole’s excellent book For I Have Sinned: The...

Books On My Mind

John Wilson

Do you remember those illustrations (which used to be very common) that showed, say, a deliberately jokey “map” of what was in someone’s brain or “on their mind”? That...

An Endless Bookshelf

John Wilson

Sometimes when I am starting a column, I look back to see what I wrote for this space roughly a year ago. I did so earlier this week, and...

On Getting Old

John Wilson

Two years plus a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column that began thus: “I am and always have been a creature of routine.” And that was very...

Unseen Skies

John Wilson

If you have been following this column for a while, you know I love the very idea of “forthcoming books”; you may recall my account of learning, for the...

Past and Future Hopes

John Wilson

A year ago at this time, I devoted a column to “Hopes and Wishes for 2024”—mostly hopes, as it turned out, but with a handful of wishes. (I was...

A Year of Reading: 2024

John Wilson

A year ago, after a series of annual lists that grew longer and longer, I changed the format of this feature, making it much more manageable in size and...

Finding Order in the Pieces

John Wilson

In October of 2023, I wrote a column here about how I came to be doing jigsaw puzzles—every day!—with my wife, Wendy, something I could never have imagined. We...

Immigration Realities

John Wilson

If you have followed this column for a while, you will have gathered that there are a lot of books in our house. Even so, should you ever visit,...

Book Recommendations for Christmas

John Wilson

October is almost gone (we’ve had a lovely fall season here in Wheaton), and it’s time—if you haven’t done so already—to start thinking about Christmas gifts. If you are...

Writing Mothers

John Wilson

In April of this year, I wrote about Nadya Williams’s Cultural Christians in the Early Church: A Historical and Practical Introduction to Christians in the Greco-Roman World, published near...

Rock Lessons

John Wilson

Late in October 2018, I wrote a First Things column called “A Sense of Time,” most of which was devoted to a then-new book by Marcia Bjornerud, Timefulness: How...

September Reflections

John Wilson

The month of September is particularly resonant for me. As some faithful readers may recall, it was on September 16, 1966, a Friday, that I first met Wendy, in...

On Forthcoming Books

John Wilson

If you have been following this column for a while, you know I am an obsessive reader and accumulator of books. Some of you may recall my account of...

Do Protestants Believe in Present-Day Miracles?

John Wilson

Recently Christianity Today published a substantial review of Carlos Eire’s fascinating book They Flew: A History of the Impossible. Eire’s book examines seemingly “impossible” accounts of miraculous events—levitation, witchcraft,...