Joseph Bottum

If you look over at the top of the lefthand column, here at the First Things website, you’ll see that we’ve begun advertising for next year’s junior fellows .Two years ago, we brought onboard John Rose and Mary Angelita Ruiz, and this year we’ve had Ryan T. Anderson and . . . . Continue Reading »

Another Christmas Rerun ¯this one from the new December issue of First Things . Shouldn’t you be subscribing ? Christmas in New York There was a woman screaming on Park Avenue, flecks of saliva spraying from her mouth as she raged into her cell phone, "It’s not my fault." . . . . Continue Reading »

Another in our series of Christmas Reruns ¯writings on the season from our authors through the years. Here’s an essay I did back in 2001 for the Weekly Standard , an attempt to figure out why the mess of A Christmas Carol remains the greatest Christmas fiction ever written. The Ghost of . . . . Continue Reading »

Another in our series of Christmas Reruns ¯ writings on the season from our authors through the years. Ever since First Things began in 1990, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus has been commenting on Christmas in his column, "The Public Square." If political America has much of a Christmas . . . . Continue Reading »

A second in our series of Christmas Reruns ¯writings on the season from our authors through the years. Here’s something of my own from First Things , a squib that appeared last year on our website, one of many I’ve done over the years to herald in the season: Comfort and Joy . . . . Continue Reading »

Pius XII is back in the news, this time in reports that the man who would later become Pope John XXIII criticized Pius for inaction during the Holocaust. The various news reports, mostly from the Associated Press, are based on an article in the Israeli journal Haaretz , which noted: Prof. Dina . . . . Continue Reading »

The first of our Christmas Reruns ¯writings on the season from our authors through the years.It’s hardly worth the effort to point out how difficult good sestinas are to write. The poet Dana Gioia has a cruel, funny sestina about how all poetry students, assigned to write one, choose to . . . . Continue Reading »

There was a woman screaming on Park Avenue, flecks of saliva spraying from her mouth as she raged into her cell phone, “It’s not my fault.” Over and over, like the high-pitched squeal of a power saw cutting bricks: It’s not my fault and a run of foul names, It’s not my fault and another . . . . Continue Reading »

Of things to blog about, the world never ceases to supply a sufficiency¯and more than a sufficiency, which means that the folder of possible blog topics often overflows before one can get to it all. In fact, every once in a while, you simply to have to grab a bucket and start baling, before . . . . Continue Reading »

In case you missed it in print, the October First Things is now available online in its entirety at no charge (click here for the table of contents). Inside are correspondence on Gilbert Meilaender’s review of Crunchy Cons , "The Diplomacy of Religious Freedom," and lawsuits brought . . . . Continue Reading »