Books are as big as they are because medieval sheep were as big as they were: [M]edieval books are no bigger or smaller than modern books, generally speaking. Gutenberg and the other early printers didn’t invent a whole new format for books, they just copied what people were already using. The question then becomes, I [...]

Anna Williams on how ignorance of botany can interfere with the enjoyment of literature: I can easily find out what the named flowers look like: here are tea roses, red and white pelargoniums, Jacobæa lilies. But when I’m reading in bed, I don’t want to get up and Google it. Even when I’m reading with [...]

From Albert Mohler’s new book Conviction to Lead, The: 25 Principles for Leadership that Matters: An old preacher . . . told a group of younger preachers to remember that they would die. ‘They are going to put you in a box,’ he said, ‘and put the box in the ground, and throw dirt on [...]

Author Jim Shepard’s favorite passage from “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” highlights a sad truth: A moment of clarity only lasts a moment. Writers talk a lot about epiphanies—what O’Connor, in her Catholic tradition, called “grace”—in short stories. But I think we’re tyrannized by a misunderstanding of Joyce’s notion of the epiphany. That [...]

If you’ve been anywhere near the evangelical blogosphere lately you’ve probably heard that Rachel Held Evans finally published A Year of Biblical Womanhood, her lame Christianized knock-off of a silly stunt-book produced five years ago. I’ve read enough of Evans’ blog to know she has a low view of scripture, so I’m not much interested [...]

Gardening marks, as clearly as any activity, the joining of nature and culture. The gardener makes nothing, but rather gathers what God has made and shapes it into new and pleasing forms. The well-designed garden shows nature more clearly and beautifully than nature can show itself. And this can be a model of politics: people [...]