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Serving Time in Alabama: A Review of Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves
Breathe in rural Alabama circa 1925. Take deep breaths, “great lungfuls of the scent-tinged air—grass and cornstalks and peanut plants, mulch and dung and mule hide” (159). Feel the heat of July. “This low sun turns every lick of water to steam, even the fresh-pumped drinks in our mess-issued bottles. The sun bakes those metal →
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Talking to Anarchists – An interview with Arlie Russell Hochschild – part 3 of 3
By now you know the story, if you’ve been following since Part 1: Blue state sociologist goes to oil patch Louisiana to try and understand the environment and the people of this Red state. Writes Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. Talks with an Eastern Shore preacher about what she →
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Churches & Dysfunctional Government – An Interview with Arlie Russell Hochschild – Part 2 of 3
We are repenting from our assumption that government can be an adequate expression of our faith. That’s one of the marks of these times for Christians on both sides of the Great Divide. When Arlie Russell Hochschild, the Berkley sociologist, went to Louisiana to try to understand the deep story of people on the American Right, →
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The Empty Bench at The Book Bin – Remembering Kirk Mariner
The sofa bench in the back of The Book Bin was empty the other day. The regulars by the coffee window are hesitant to sit there. A sign on the door indicates that the staff knows that our local independent book store will be a place of mourning and memory for awhile. The bench was →
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Crossing the Great Divide: An Interview with Arlie Russell Hochschild – part 1 of 3
Can a Berkley sociologist and a Louisiana oil patch Tea Party member find common ground? That was the experiment Arlie Russell Hochschild (the sociologist) undertook when she found she was having a hard time understanding the forces that were shaping Red States. When I wrote a review of her book about the project, Strangers →
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Guest Blogger – C. Christopher Smith: Stirring the Economic Imaginations of Churches
I’ve learned a lot about books from C. Christopher Smith. Chris is not only the editor of the Englewood Review of Books, to which I occasionally contribute. His press is also the publisher of my book, A Space for Peace in the Holy Land: Listening to Modern Israel & Palestine. He’s a great observer and interpreter →
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An Osage Mirror: A Review of Killers of the Flower Moon
Two-thirds of the way through this book [Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI] and I was fixing to get very disappointed. Sure, David Grann had done what his title said that he was going to do. He had thrown us into the strange wave of murders →
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The Weird & Beautiful Vision of George Saunders: A Review of Lincoln in the Bardo
You would not think that a full-scale recapitulation of Ecclesiastes would make a great bestseller. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! This human thing is an exercise of unknowing. I know that there is nothing better than that they should eat, drink, and experience pleasure in their hard work. This is the philosophy of the →
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James Baldwin’s Moment and the Danger of Racial Innocence
James Baldwin is having a moment, 30 years after his death. First, Ta-Nehasi Coates’ Between the World and Me, a book that drew its inspiration from Baldwin’s 1963 book The Fire Next Time, topped The New York Times’ bestsellers list. Then, a documentary about Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, was nominated for an Academy →
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Heartlands 