Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes — The First Man Honest Enough to Say What Power Really Is
Most philosophers dress up power. They give it noble clothes — natural law, divine right,…
Grassland by Richard Manning — What We Buried Under the Breadbasket
A review of Richard Manning’s Grassland — the story of North America’s vanishing prairies, what we destroyed to build industrial agriculture, and why it matters now.
Screen by Jessica Helfand — She Saw the Wreckage Before the Crash
Twenty-three essays. Two hundred pages. Published in 2001, when most people were still calling the…
Fearsome Fauna: A Field Guide to the Creatures That Live in You — Roger M. Knutson
Pick this book up and the cover alone does something to you. Illustrated parasites curl…
The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville — The Con Is the Country
Every April Fools’ Day, a stranger boards a Mississippi steamboat. He changes his face, his…
The Religions of the Oppressed by Vittorio Lanternari — When the Powerless Invent Their Own God
Desperation is the mother of theology. That’s what I kept thinking as I worked through…
