A fun piece on "line editing"--the meticulous scrutiny, word by word, of a piece of writing by an editor, which aims to ensure that each word, each sentence, each paragraph, is doing the work the...

Seriously, what is the point?  I think there is one, but the evidence of our age is that most churches and other religious institutions don't seem able to invest enough attention and energy in it to...

Christopher Isherwood once compared Oscar Levant to a character out of Dostoyevsky: “completely unmasked at all times.”  This piece, masquerading as a review of some newly released recordings, gives...

There area a fun set of conversations going on in anglophone philosophy of history (esp early modern phil of hist) right now about the relationship between, more or less, historical understanding...

Church buildings are one of the more under-appreciated aspects of Christianity.  A similar thing can be said of mosques in Islam, and possibly synagogues in Judaism, and other religions as well.  In...

Your first catch of the day.

Great and really detailed article about London and how it has exploded in the past three decades. I love cities, and London combines post-modern global connectivity...

An interesting review of a new biography of Walter Bagehot, the great Victorian polymath and social thinker.  I have not read everything he's done--only THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION and some of his...

The post-World War II intellectuals were a remarkable crew.  Their thinking was motivated by the apocalyptic experience of the war, and sharpened by their experiences in the war, at the front or in...

Just because I worry you may not have enough to do on the weekend.

A nice little piece on irony that touches on a number of themes.  One thing it doesn't really touch on, though it cites...

This is poignant and beautiful, and resonates with a lot of my own book buying (on the web, not infrequently books deaccessioned from libraries, not infrequently university and college libraries)...