As you walk away from the stacks, your eye lands on an intriguing title you’ve never heard of and you’ve not been looking for. It turns out to contain all the crucial information.
Just when you’re hitting transition and the book is just not going to come without a surgical intervention, a book that you don’t remembering ordering arrives in the mail, and it happens to have notches in all the right places.
Someone you barely know who doesn’t know what you’re working on makes an irrelevant and passing, but wholly illuminating, comment.
Tossing in bed at 4 AM, suffering deadline insomnia, an organizing thesis forms in your brain.
Research. That’s how it’s done. Like everything else, it’s sheer grace.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
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