The Bible as Icon

Last updated on: August 8, 2013 at 2:13 pm By Caroline Langston

For Vic Sizemore With six children in a Southern Baptist family in the 1970s, we could easily have had a dozen Bibles in the house: There was the giant, gray Family Bible with the embossed cover that resided on the bottom shelf of the living room, which nobody ever read. And there was a scattering of those palm-sized New Testament and Psalms around the place, like silverfish in a drawer—always white or pale green, with ersatz gold leafing that would... Read more

Black Boy, 2013

Last updated on: January 16, 2015 at 3:47 pm By Vic Sizemore

One of my boys is reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy for his English class this coming semester. One of my sons has already read the book, and in a couple of years my daughter will read it. They will see that it was published in 1945, closing in on seventy years ago. They will see how hard it was to be a black boy in the United States back in 1945. I was never assigned Black Boy in school. As... Read more

Orthodox Films Fill the Void

Last updated on: August 5, 2013 at 2:25 pm By Bradford Winters

Living on the F train subway line in Brooklyn, I am regularly exposed to one of the more consistently curious sights that New York City has to offer, one that tends to trump those attention-seeking sights that surround it by virtue of its contrasting virtues: the Hasidim, the black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews who’d rather go unnoticed in our midst. From where I’m standing, their disdain for the vanities that drive those other eye-catching strangers on the train who actually want your... Read more

The American Divide

Last updated on: August 1, 2013 at 12:17 pm By Tony Woodlief

This is not an essay about politics but I have to begin with politics because it stands between you and me and what I want to say to you, which concerns our darkened hearts and our dreadful tribalization of a country whose motto is E pluribus unum. The politics are this: I have an unfashionable view of human rights and nature. I stand for localism and classical education and reverencing life; I stand against warmongering and utilitarianism and corporate cronyism.... Read more

In Praise of the Printed Book, Part 2

Last updated on: August 1, 2013 at 11:55 am By Guest Contributor

By Warren Farha Guest Post Continued from yesterday. An increasing torrent of books and articles reflect on the Internet as The Great Distraction, and I’ve had the opportunity recently to read a few. The first I’ll mention is The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, by Mark Bauerlein. Bauerlein is not saying that millennials—youth who’ve grown up in the Digital Age—are less intelligent than their predecessors. He is saying that due to the... Read more

In Praise of the Printed Book, Part 1

Last updated on: August 1, 2013 at 12:56 am By Guest Contributor

By Warren Farha Guest Post Note: This post and the one following it have been condensed from an address given by the author. I’ve been charged today with the task of explaining in some coherent form “why books?”—that is, paper and ink between covers—rather than “books” in some digital format. This is a visceral issue for me and not just because my vocation is the selling of conventional books. It touches me at points of my development as a human... Read more

Cutting Away the Noise

Last updated on: July 29, 2013 at 1:33 pm By Shannon Huffman Polson

Fifteen years ago, there was no end to the noise. It took a cutting to get me to silence. I worked twelve-hour days and longer in an aircraft hangar on a flight line of hundreds of helicopters with the cacophony of auxiliary power units, the collision of metal, and rotor blades beating the air outside, sounds so loud earplugs and noise-canceling helmets were required. After my shift I would climb into my car and turn on the radio, classic rock... Read more

A Feast for Hungry Eyes: An Interview with Sam Phillips, Part 2

Last updated on: July 29, 2013 at 1:33 pm By Chad Thomas Johnston

Continued from yesterday. Chad Thomas Johnston: The website for The Long Play shut down on May 1st. Did you achieve what you hoped to with this project? Sam Phillips: I did. It was so much fun, and there was instant gratification in knowing that, in a few weeks, I was going to make my work available to people without having to jump through certain hoops usually associated with the release of a record. There was a lot of freedom in... Read more

A Feast for Hungry Eyes: An Interview with Sam Phillips, Part 1

Last updated on: July 25, 2013 at 12:44 pm By Chad Thomas Johnston

Many songsmiths have struggled to navigate the commercial wilderness that arose in the aftermath of the music industry’s collapse. Singer-songwriter Sam Phillips, however, has played the part of intrepid explorer, forging brave paths across this foreign landscape. In October of 2009, she created a subscription service for her fans called The Long Play. For fifty-two dollars, her devotees could feast at her musical banquet table and partake of the sonic equivalent of a seven-course meal over the following year. In... Read more