Can Whimsy Save the Small-Town Novel?
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger. Grove Press, 2018. Paperback, 320 pages, $17. Reviewed by Matt Miller Small towns in American fiction have a history as varied as the landscapes they inhabit. Often stifling or enervating, as in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sherwood...
How the Land Can Heal
Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, a New Earth by Charles Massy. Chelsea Green, 2018. Paperback, 511 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Matt Miller Americans today little appreciate how European settlement transformed the landscape of this continent. Before...
Moral Reasoning in an Acceptable Time
The Kairos Novels: the Wrinkle in Time and Polly O’Keefe Quartets by Madeleine L’Engle, edited by Leonard S. Marcus. Library of America, 2018. Hardcover, 1917 pages, $80. Reviewed by Matt Miller Fantastic literature has always been beloved of those who feel themselves...
Decades ago, Robert Nisbet anticipated many of today’s concerns about loneliness, bureaucracy, and declining community. Luke C. Sheahan (@lsheahan) revisits the ideas behind those warnings and their relevance today.
Questions about first principles have become fashionable again. @HorcherF and @DanJTPitt apply generosity to smooth contention between intellectuals and politicians, they embrace the tension between theory and practice, and they highlight the power of particularity as a source of