I work in technology research. In my office, I have currently four screens for two laptops in addition to my smartphone. I have over 20 years of formal education. I’m not exactly against technology and make a strange candidate to study the Amish. Regardless, I’m deeply religious and see limits in what technologies can give us. I like living off the grid when possible. Technology, to me, should always be a means, and never an…
I don’t reside in the natural audience of this book. Professionally, I work developing technologies at an academic medical center in a city. Therefore, my orientation is for technology, and I’m generally ignorant about agriculture. I acknowledge those biases. I read this book because I’ve long been curious about agrarian-type thinkers like GK Chesterton. I respect Wendell Berry’s fiction about small-town America, and I seek to understand the world better, including perspectives different than me.…
Victoria Amelina died shortly before she was to leave Ukraine to compile her war diary into a book. She left behind an 11-year-old son in another country. She wanted to document the injustice of Russia’s centuries-long attempt to obliterate Ukrainian culture. Before the Russian invasion, she organized Ukrainian literary festivals. After the invasion, she documented war crimes against humanity from this wave of conflict and recurring genocidal attempts throughout history to erase Ukrainian self-identity. Amelina’s…
I have mixed reactions about this book. On the good side, the book is thoroughly researched with original work. The authors interviewed dozens of women in dozens of work settings about their workplace experiences. It covers the field comprehensively and leaves no important issue untouched. Topics include things like marital work-sharing, being a mother in the workplace, generational changes, and working with other women. It even has a summary of twenty action points in a…
Historians sometimes contend that before the fall of the Roman Empire, Western society possessed enough knowledge that our civilization could have advanced directly to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Age. Instead, the advent of the so-called Dark Ages reminds us that history does not always progress. We must seize the opportunities; our collective will and choices matter in history’s long arc. Novelist John Green has a self-described “obsession” with the disease of tuberculosis, or what…
A standard part of contemporary American culture is the division of society into “red” and “blue” components. Whether concerning states, cities, or ways of life, American society has become more polarized. Instead of the regionalism before the Civil War, these separations often have broken down between a rural versus urban dynamic. Some cities are even considered “red” havens. Bill Bishop first made these observations about 20 years ago, and this book culminated to define the…
When a boy, I grew up a Republican in the conservative upstate of South Carolina. I knew about feminism from the news and school, but the history of struggle was not a central part of my household. In 1993, I heard of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s appointment to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton, but she was not on my “team.” Therefore, I didn’t pay close attention. Only as an adult did my awareness and curiosity…
In this book, philosopher of science and eminent chemist Michael Polanyi warns, scientific inquiry cannot exist without a society and a culture that supports it. That is, science’s light can be extinguished if society decides to stamp it out. The freedom to learn about nature requires not only economic supports but also cultural supports. Writing just after the conclusion of World War II, he argues that scientific progress in Europe needs the foundation of a…
This history describes how evangelical culture and its attitudes about masculinity have shaped white Christianity and American politics. In so doing, it tries to describe why evangelical Christians, supposedly the among the most devout and religious, have chosen to support a politician who is anything but devout and resembling the Bible’s Jesus. Frankly, Kristin Kobes du Mez, a minister’s daughter, does an honest, thorough job. The evangelicalism she describes is wedded more closely to patriarchy…
Much as it’s hard to critique a William Shakespeare or a Mark Twain, it’s hard to critique Virginia Woolf. She pioneered women’s literature in the early twentieth century and helped lay its foundation for an incredibly successful, bustling marketplace in today’s world. Despite nagging misogyny, women writers receive deserved respect because of Woolf’s proposals to let women’s genius work. So in one sense, this book offers a distilled, timeless essay worthy of historical study for…