Essays by

The Editors

Being a Kid

What do you think is the best part of being a kid?

Working with the Earth

This fall and winter we invited people who work with the land—farmers, ranchers, foresters, ecologists and others—to tell us what they think the earth is […]

Skin in the Game

After the midterms, we had our writers and editors reflect on what the election meant to them.

Letter on Justice

Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” begins with a Traveler, described as a “great Western explorer,” learning about a “peculiar apparatus” of justice.

Living in Prison

This summer, in partnership with Chicago Books to Women in Prison, we distributed a short survey to incarcerated women across the country, inviting them to tell us about their experience of living in prison.

Intellectuals in Crisis

Intellectual Ex-Radicals and World Reaction: The Crisis of the Disillusioned Fellow-Travelers of Bolshevism Is Not the Same as a “Crisis of Marxism” (Trotsky 1939) The Intellectual: […]

The Life of the Mind

By some indicators we are entering a new Dark Age: anti-intellectual fervor is raging, suspicion of experts is at an all-time high and appeals to reason are dismissed as passé.

Survey: What is church for?

We invited priests and pastors from across the country to participate in a short survey about the joys, challenges and day-to-day work of leading a church in contemporary America.

Letter on Reformation

If you happened to log onto Facebook around Thanksgiving, you might have seen these words, blinking in white against an emergency-red background: “URGENT: If you’re not freaking out right now about net neutrality you’re not paying attention.”