Uncategorized
Post-Castro, Post-Truth
On this episode of the First Things Podcast: Editor Rusty Reno talks with associate editor Julia Yost…
Jehoiachin at Table
Nathan MacDonald (Not Bread Alone, 176–7) has a fascinating chapter on the role of food in the…
Titles We Didn’t Choose — December 2016
The December 2016 issue of First Things is ready for your perusal, in print and on our…
Structure and Theme in Lear
Note #1: Act 1, scene 2 of King Lear, which initiates Edmund’s plots against father Gloucester and…
Lovers and Silent Women
Dympna Callaghan points out in her Shakespeare’s Sonnets that “Petrarchan love was always unrequited and unconsummated, like…
Freak of History
Diarmaid MacCulloch starts his study of the Reformation, All Things Made New, with a sketch of the…
Feast of Kingship
Nathan MacDonald (Not Bread Alone) argues that “The description of the feast in [Isaiah] 25.6–8 is usually…
Tangled
Emma Tarlo’s recent Entangled is a study of the global market in human hair. In a TLS…
Stop!
“Scott Alexander” (a pseudonym) applies some common sense the media characterization of Trump as an “openly racist”…
Three Forms of Madness
In an editorial introduction to King Lear, GK Hunter observes that the play depicts three forms of…
Voting in Fear and Trembling
The election of 2016 confronted me with a crisis. My actuarial life expectancy has me down to…
House of Wisdom
1 Chronicles 22 records a lengthy speech from David to his son Solomon. The very setup suggests…
Sources of Apocalyptic
In his 1892 Lectures on the Apocalypse (29–30), William Milligan argues that “the symbolism of the Revelation…
Junior Varsity Angel Wrestling Team
The last thing you see in writer-director Stephen Cone’s 2011 film The Wise Kids is its dedication:…
Church With Soul of America?
The paragraphs below are taken, with slight changes, from a column I wrote at Firstthings.com in July…
