2013-01-02T16:15:31-04:00

Cross-posted at The Way of Improvement Leads Home Yesterday I received in the mail the January/February 2012 issue of Books & Culture.  As usual, it is loaded with great stuff and I look forward to exploring it more fully over the course of the next few weeks. This month’s issue begins with Mark Noll’s tribute to two giants in the field of American history who passed away this Fall: Eugene Genovese and Henry May.  I am sure the article will... Read more

2012-12-31T15:23:01-04:00

Happy New Year! I have routinely resolved at the New Year that I’d like to read more, and to read more intentionally. (Of course, a major part of my job as a history professor is reading, and much of that reading is pleasurable, but I am talking about the kind of non-professional reading I do in the evenings or on weekends.) My new Baylor colleague Alan Jacobs encourages us to embrace the freedom to read at whim, but I also... Read more

2012-12-20T15:14:55-04:00

Every five years, the US intelligence community issues a projection of what the world will look like in the near future. The most recent offering is Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, which you can download full text, and it amply repays your reading. (I should here declare an interest, in that I have in the past played a consultant role in these projects, although not in the present document). I won’t bother here to summarize all the points about international... Read more

2012-12-30T19:07:19-04:00

A few things online that caught my attention this week:   Thoughts on the history of reading Jack Rakove reviews Kevin Phillips’s 1775: A Good Year for a Revolution Alan Jacobs: “A Christmas Thought About Guns“ How to show them you want the job Christmas in 1776 and 1739 Writing fiction vs. writing non-fiction   Read more here. Read more

2012-12-30T09:28:13-04:00

If it didn’t exist, you couldn’t invent the New York Times. Today’s paper has an interesting and fair-minded piece by Amy O’Leary about various emerging church ventures in big cities, and how they are trying new tactics to reach younger markets. All fair enough. The title of the article, though, is a jaw dropping Building Congregations Around Art Galleries and Cafes as Spirituality Wanes. Excuse me? The evidence for said waning appears to be the recent Pew report about the... Read more

2012-12-27T11:53:38-04:00

I have just read Rupert Shortt’s impressive new book Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack. I should explain that I got my copy direct from the UK, and I don’t know exactly when it will be available officially on this side of the Atlantic. Very soon, I hope, as it is just an excellent study of anti-Christian persecution around the world. Really, it’s a splendidly rich and informative book, and very up-to-the moment in its coverage. It has been favorably reviewed... Read more

2012-12-25T23:58:06-04:00

Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic.  If you do not read him regularly you should.  Sometimes Wieseltier will make you angry, but he will always make you think. In the December 31 issue of the magazine he extolls the virtue of a college education while at the same time attacking the “uncollege” movement.  Led by author Dale J. Stephens, the leaders of this movement are telling promising young high school students to avoid college and pursue... Read more

2012-12-10T15:01:48-04:00

In December 1739, the great evangelist George Whitefield was completing a treacherous overland trip from Maryland to South Carolina, and he stopped for Christmas in New Bern (“Newborn”), a relatively new parish in North Carolina, which was also one of the newer southern colonies. He had already seen phenomenal crowds attend his outdoor meetings in England, and now he stood at the threshold of America’s Great Awakening, too. How did Whitefield (who is the subject of my latest book project) spend... Read more

2012-12-23T23:13:03-04:00

As this posting falls on December 24 it seems virtually impossible to make it a workaday one rather than a seasonal theme.  The relationship between work days and Christmas was handled memorably in the early years of colonial America by the governor of Plymouth, William Bradford.  His band of Pilgrims being low church and high principled, Bradford records in Of Plymouth Plantation his unwillingness to give laborers the day off:  On the day called Chrismasday, the Govr calmd them out... Read more

2012-12-23T19:08:10-04:00

A few things online that caught my attention this week: Professors:  Stop the gloom and doom Dan Richter reviews Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675.  Graham Hodges reviews it here. Fall 2012 Cushwa Center Newsletter Is the life of the mind billable? Robert George reviews Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Unwritten Constitution.  And a podcast. Read more here Read more

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