Arts & Letters
A selection of recent articles on this topic
Latch Hook
The only rug we had was on the wall—linoleum was what my mother knew—a woodsy scene, green…
Might Does Not Always Make Right, or Even Sense
The “Melian Dialogue,” from Thucydides’s classic History of the Peloponnesian War, is the foundational text of the realist…
How Bad Bunny Mogged George Bush
On Sunday night, Americans had two options for the Super Bowl halftime show. The official NFL show…
The Protestant Mind
The following is an excerpt from the first edition of The Protestant Mind, a newsletter from First Things. We invite…
Noble Rituals
What are rituals? Rituals are not just routines. Mere routines are pragmatic and instrumental. Rituals transcend routines…
Uncovering the Real Melania
Melania, Brett Ratner’s documentary following the first lady of 2017–2020 around as she gets ready to become…
The Ones Who Didn’t Convert
Melanie McDonagh’s Converts, reviewed in First Things last month, allows us to gaze close-up at the extraordinary…
The Burning World of William Blake (ft. Mark Vernon)
In the latest installment of the ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein, Mark Vernon joins…
Bladee’s Redemptive Rap
Georg Friedrich Philipp von Hardenberg, better known by his pen name Novalis, died at the age of…
Visions of Hell
A first proposition: High-quality film video lowers the cost of horror to zero. The horror of the…
The Fanfiction Reckoning (ft. Veronica Clarke)
First Things is proud to introduce a new podcast series. Secret Third Thing is a show about…
In the Footsteps of Aeneas
Gian Lorenzo Bernini had only just turned twenty when he finished his sculpture of Aeneas, the mythical…
Mark Twain’s Religion
In 2014, when Kevin Malone’s opera Mysterious 44 premiered in Manchester, England, the production featured narrative voiceovers…
The Strange Sadness of Blue Moon
Because we live in an age of cheap cynicism and alleged sophistication, many viewers of Richard Linklater’s…
Caravaggio the Destroyer (ft. Jaspreet Singh Boparai)
In this episode, Jaspreet Singh Boparai joins R. R. Reno on The Editor’s Desk to talk about…
