Category: Cities
Finding Belonging in the City
Chad Bryant. Prague: Belonging in the Modern City. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021. 352pp, $29.95. Historian Chad Bryant has produced a moving and deeply informative book in Prague: Belonging in the Modern City. The book’s structure, consisting chiefly of five...
The Lost City: What’s the use of cities in a world of states?
I once quoted to my father, who is of a Marxist disposition and considers patriotism “the last refuge of scoundrels”, the famous words of Sir Walter Scott: “Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath...
Global Economies, Immigration, and Precarious Places
By Matthew Petersen In response to somewhat shrill claims by some Christian intellectuals that Christians ought to support mass migration, and oppose Brexit, Stephen Wolfe recently published an article at Mere Orthodoxy arguing that Christians can (and perhaps should) oppose...
Boycotts and the End of Neighborliness
It’s happening again: Someone did something bad and now other people are threatening not to do business with them. But in this case the target for the boycott is not Starbucks or Chick-fil-a or JC Penney or Forever 21; it’s...
An Interview with Laura Dunn, Director of “The Seer”
Tomorrow I hope to publish a brief review of Laura Dunn’s new film “The Seer.” It’s a unique film and a hard one to pin down because while it is a portrait of Wendell Berry, Berry himself is never actually...
Walt Whitman on Neighbors and Strangers
It is good to remember, especially in light of these presidential primaries, that no era is without its share of baffling endorsements. Andrew Carnegie, whose imperious steel mills did more than perhaps anyone to antagonize the neo-transcendentalist folklore of Leaves...
Of Jayber Crow and Donald Trump
In his novel Jayber Crow Wendell Berry raises the question of how a person can love and give themselves to something that is dying. Throughout the novel, Crow, the book’s protagonist, reflects on his life in Port William, a small Kentucky...
On Loving and Hating Places
There are a few more things that need to be said as we wrap up this week’s Crump-related fun. (And no, I did not watch last night’s debate so do not ask me about it. I was busy playing Football...
Fear the Lifestyle that will Kill Body and Soul
I got a lot of responses to my recent Christianity Today article on vaccines, but one of the more arresting ones was from a mother who asked me what I would say to the parents of a child who had...
Do we Really Need Small Towns?
This bit from my friend Jake Meador’s excellent piece on why we need small towns has lingered with me: No, we don’t all have to move to small towns to find these communities. But small towns make that sort of...