-
#7 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: The Thin Light of Freedom
History books are always going to find a way to my reading stand. One of the reasons is that I had one of the country’s greatest historians as a professor back in the day. Ed Ayers told the story of the United States, particularly of the American South, with an eye for conflicts, resilience, and →
-
#8 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: Chesapeake Requiem
Tangier Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay has been getting a lot of attention in recent years. CNN did a report that got the mayor, Ooker Eskridge, an audience with the President. A social media storm naturally followed. And now Earl Swift has written a magisterial account of a year on the island. →
-
#9 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: The Sarah Book
In my last post, we began the countdown of the Heartlands Best Reads of 2018. Check out that post for the criteria. The Sarah Book is a crazy book, continuing author Scott McClanahan’s life goal of making West Virginia look even more offbeat than most folks already believe it to be. It’s scandalous, shocking, heart-breaking, and laugh-out-loud →
-
#10 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: Turtles All the Way Down
What does it take to be a Heartlands Best Read of 2018? —Alex has to have read the book. This is a big limitation right from the get-go, but, hey, it’s reality. —Excellent writing. Good stories, good prose, good poetry. You won’t get there on the ideas alone. —A strong sense of place. —Preference is →
-
Godsend and Our Capacity for God
“I lack the spiritual gene,” the New York Times’ Dwight Garner says in reviewing John Wray’s new book, Godsend: A Novel. “I can grow resentful of novels that lead me into a cave of superstition and wished ignorance and then seal the entrance.” Not that he didn’t like the novel. Garner, (perhaps the leading book →
-
Silence, Poetry & the Salvation of Seamus Heaney
A Review of Christian Wiman’s He Held Radical Light The poet Seamus Heaney paused in the middle of dinner and leaned over to make a confession to Christian Wiman, who was, at the time, the editor of Poetry magazine. Knowing Wiman to be a Christian not only in name, Heaney admitted that he “felt caught between →
-
One Last Crossing with Cormac McCarthy: A Review of Cities of the Plain
We got John Grady and Billy Parham back for the last crossing. John Grady was the romantically-inclined teenaged horse whisperer from All the Pretty Horses. Billy Parham was the beleaguered teenaged ranch hand who seems always to be helping people get home—a wolf and his dead brother, Boyd, in The Crossing. Cormac McCarthy brings the →
-
Georgia on his Mind: George Whitefield and the Margins of Empire [from Englewood Review]
This review originally appeared on the Englewood Review of Books. Experiments flourish on the margins. It’s why visionaries and mavericks gather in places far from the watchful eye of social convention and official control. Think Donald Judd making his art and his mark in Marfa in ultra-West Texas. Think Brigham Young and the Mormons building →
-
The Shame of Rural America: The Heartlands Interview with Robert Wuthnow Concludes, 3 of 3
In the last part of my interview with Princeton sociologist, Robert Wuthnow, we talked about rural churches. In this segment we pull back the lens and look at shame, among other things… You say in the book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, that part of your effort is to explain to other →
-
What About the Methodists?: Robert Wuthnow talks churches, 2 of 3
In the first part of my interview with Princeton’s Robert Wuthnow, one of America’s premier sociologists, we talked about the current face of the Heartland. Wuthnow’s book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, talks about the changing dynamics of many rural institutions, including churches. I enlisted him to help me think about churches →
/
Tumblr
/
Heartlands 