America’s Great Poet of Darkness
If you read Frost for the snow, but don’t feel the cold, then you’re not really reading Frost
From the Warp and the Woof, We Rise
Posted on March 21, 2024
Image: The 2023 Ernel Martinez mural tribute to Dick Allen, commissioned by Mural Arts of Philadelphia; muralarts.org.
Dick Allen faced racist taunts and boos so numerous and unrelenting that he became the first player in baseball to wear his batting helmet out in the field.
Decline or Oscillation?
What looks like a disastrous collapse in students’ literacy may be simply a reversion to a kind of mean.
Driving to Trinity Site: Just Another Day at the Office
Posted on March 11, 2024
Image: The first nuclear test explosion, July 16, 1945, by Jack W. Aeby, a civilian worker at Los Alamos; public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
A Jazz Age Mystery in a Reimagined America
A murder mystery that is also an impressive sociological imaginary.
Something Happened to Me the Other Day
When someone so much as touches a state vehicle, the wheels of justice begin to turn, and that’s that.