Books
When climate is a tool of empire
David Livingstone explores the dubious history of overclaiming or distorting the role of climate.
Pages soaked in mystery
Rebecca McCarthy traces Norman Maclean’s poetic sensibilities from his University of Chicago classroom to A River Runs Through It.
Diplomatic evangelism
Emily Conroy-Krutz chronicles the complex relationship between Protestant missionaries and the US Foreign Service in the 19th century.
Did enslaved people write the New Testament?
Candida Moss argues that when early Christian texts were written, unpaid laborers were in the room where it happened.
What is poetry in the face of war?
Mosab Abu Toha’s poems are about Gaza. Reading them I saw all people who suffer.
Eight homilies for practicing presence
Rabbi Sharon Brous believes we can build beloved community simply by showing up for one another.
Evangelical reckonings
Randall Balmer, David Gushee, and Tim Alberta diagnose what’s gone wrong.
What if your plants could hear you?
Science writer Zoë Schlanger investigates the edges of botany research—and uncovers deep philosophical questions.
What White Christians did to Black Charlotte
Greg Jarrell explores how one congregation in his city took advantage of racist urban renewal policies.
Re-enchanting reading
Craig Tichelkamp asks whether our best hope for restoring a culture of reading might lie centuries in the past.
A fictional reservation that feels real
Amy Frykholm’s novel creates a fascinating interplay of Native people and settlers whose lives are complicated by intergenerational trauma.
More than eulogies
French rabbi Delphine Horvilleur reflects on 11 funerals to paint a vibrant picture of Jewish life.
Wreckage and euphoria
Barbara Crooker’s new poetry collection is a journey through loss that reveals the world’s beauty.
The Obama campaign, fictionalized
Vinson Cunningham’s debut novel focuses on a campaign staffer’s indeterminate views, using them to shed light on the rise of a political star.
True crime at the div school
In 1991, religion scholar Ioan Petru Culianu was murdered at the University of Chicago. Was this killing related to his controversial mentor, Mircea Eliade?
When the doctrine of discovery became law
Steven Schwartzberg shows how the 19th-century arguments for Native American expulsion went against the intentions of the framers of the Constitution—and how they remain with us today.
Healing from the ground up
In her memoir, Lore Ferguson Wilbert draws connections between her life and the forest‘s understory.
What happened to the American dream in the 20th century?
David Leonhardt tells the story in the language of economic analysis.
The unsettling surprise of God’s mercy
Father-son duo Richard and Christopher Hays set aside their old positions in favor of a more expansive view of biblically faithful queer inclusion.
A poet’s quarrel with herself
Danielle Chapman’s lustrous memoir is at its best when she holds her family’s Confederate history up to the light.