Items
Details
Table of Contents
I. PEOPLE. The fun of William F. Buckley
Buckley: a life athwart history
David Brinkley: proud anachronism
Barry Goldwater: "Cheerful Malcontent"
John F. Kennedy's thoughts on death
Eugene McCarthy: The tamarack tree of American politics
What George McGovern made
Daniel Patrick Moynihan: the senate's sisyphus
John Kenneth Galbraith's liberalism as condescension
Milton Friedman: ebullient master of the dismal science
Alan Greenspan: high-achieving minimalist
The not-at-all dull George Washington
George Washington's long journey home
John Marshall: the most important American never to have been president
James Madison: well, yes, of course
Longfellow: a forgotten founder
Ronald Reagan: the steel behind the smile
Reagan and the vicissitudes of historical judgments
John Paul II: "A flame rescued from dry wood"
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: an enlightenment fundamentalist
Hugh Hefner: tuning fork of American fantasies
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: the emeritus beat as tourist attraction
Buck Owen's Bakersfield Sound
Andrew Nesbitt: 79-lb. master of Tourette Syndrome
Simeon Wright's grace
II. PATHS TO THE PRESENT. The most important American war you know next-to-nothing about
The amazing banality of flight
The price of misreading the prairie sky
A range of mountains on the move
The emblematic novel of the 1930s (Gone with the Wind)
All quiet at the overpass
FDR's transformation of liberalism
Retailers give thanks for Thanksgiving (and FDR)
FDR's Christmas guest from hell
"My place is with my shipmates"
An anthem of American optimism in 1943
When war WAS the answer
Catching up to Captain Philip
The most fateful heart attack in American history
How Ike's highways helped heal Civil War wounds
The short, unhappy life of the Edsel
The 50s in our rearview mirror
2002: superstitions are bad luck
2003: lingerie and duct tape
2004: The Passion of the Christ and the passions of the faculty clubs
2005: "In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans"
2006: "Go ahead, we will get into one of the other boats"
2007: Ready, fire, aim
III. GOVERNING. The two Americans: hard and soft
Angela Job's resilience
Against "national greatness conservatism"
Summa contra Reagan nostalgia
The left's plea for materialistic politics
Constitutional monomania
Judicial activism, wise and not
The hard truth about "soft rights"
Oologah's, and America's, slide
A fraudulent "fairness"
Policing speech in Oakland
Liberalism's itch in Minneapolis
Chicago: from the White City to the Green City
Our moralizing tax code
"Electronic morphine" on the Ohio River
Prohibition II: interestingly selective
Being green at Ben & Jerry's
The tyranny of the small picture
Draining the reservoir of reverence
United 93: "we've go to do it ourselves"
Nothing changes everything
IV. SENSIBILITIES AND SENSITIVITIES. Narcissism as news
The speciesism of featherless bipeds
What we owe to what we eat
The Holocaust: handcrafted
The "daring" of the avant-garde yet again
Anti-Semitism across the political spectrum
When Harry remet Hanne
Cars as mobile sculpture
Hog heaven: happy one hundredth, Harley
Restoration at 346 Madison
Starbucks, Nail salons, and the aesthetic imperative
Manners vs. social autism
A punctuation vigilante
America's literature of regret
Chief Illiniwek and the indignation industry
Christmas at our throats
V. LEARNING. National amnesia and planting cut flowers
A sensory blitzkrieg of surfaces
"Philosophy teaching by examples"
Fascinating contingencies
Ed Schools vs. Education
This just in from the professors: conservatism is a mental illness
The law of group polarization in academia
Antioch College's epitaph
A scholar's malfeasance gunned down
Juggling scarves in the therapeutic nation
Nature, nurture, and Larry Summer's sin
AP Harry applies to college
Teaching minnows the pleasure of precision
VI. GAMES. Raising Michael Oher
The man from Moro Bottom
"Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer!"
Randy Shannon's realism
The NFL: an intensification of reality
Speaking SportsCenterese
The movie, and the truth, about Texas Western
VII. THE GAME. "Remember 1908!"
Jackie Robinson: the possible and the inevitable
Ted Williams: "I can't stand it, I'm so good"
Roberto Clemente: "We think he can hit"
Greg Maddux: "Watch this: the first-base coach may be going to the hospital"
Take me out to the Metric
Elias knows EVERYTHING
The game's gifted eccentrics
Don't beat a dead horse in the mouth
The Golden Age
Pet Rose, always hustling
The precious, precarious equipoise
Barry Bonds: enhanced and devalued
The methodical Mr. Aaron
Realism among the RiverDogs
Striving for motel years
Seeking anonymous perfection
"Where's baseball?"
VIII. WONDERING. Incest at "a genetically discreet remove"
An intellectual hijacking
From Dayton, TN to Rhode Island's Committee on Fish and Game
Earth: not altogether intelligently designed
Intelligent design and unintelligent movies
The Pope, the neurosurgeon, and the ghost in the machine
How biology buttresses morality, which conforms to . . . biology
The Space Program's search for . . . us
Nuclear waste: that's us
The loudest sound in human experience
L = BB + pw + BC/BF
Wonder what we are for? wondering
IX. MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH. Golly, what did Jon DO?
The long dying of Louise Will.
Buckley: a life athwart history
David Brinkley: proud anachronism
Barry Goldwater: "Cheerful Malcontent"
John F. Kennedy's thoughts on death
Eugene McCarthy: The tamarack tree of American politics
What George McGovern made
Daniel Patrick Moynihan: the senate's sisyphus
John Kenneth Galbraith's liberalism as condescension
Milton Friedman: ebullient master of the dismal science
Alan Greenspan: high-achieving minimalist
The not-at-all dull George Washington
George Washington's long journey home
John Marshall: the most important American never to have been president
James Madison: well, yes, of course
Longfellow: a forgotten founder
Ronald Reagan: the steel behind the smile
Reagan and the vicissitudes of historical judgments
John Paul II: "A flame rescued from dry wood"
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: an enlightenment fundamentalist
Hugh Hefner: tuning fork of American fantasies
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: the emeritus beat as tourist attraction
Buck Owen's Bakersfield Sound
Andrew Nesbitt: 79-lb. master of Tourette Syndrome
Simeon Wright's grace
II. PATHS TO THE PRESENT. The most important American war you know next-to-nothing about
The amazing banality of flight
The price of misreading the prairie sky
A range of mountains on the move
The emblematic novel of the 1930s (Gone with the Wind)
All quiet at the overpass
FDR's transformation of liberalism
Retailers give thanks for Thanksgiving (and FDR)
FDR's Christmas guest from hell
"My place is with my shipmates"
An anthem of American optimism in 1943
When war WAS the answer
Catching up to Captain Philip
The most fateful heart attack in American history
How Ike's highways helped heal Civil War wounds
The short, unhappy life of the Edsel
The 50s in our rearview mirror
2002: superstitions are bad luck
2003: lingerie and duct tape
2004: The Passion of the Christ and the passions of the faculty clubs
2005: "In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans"
2006: "Go ahead, we will get into one of the other boats"
2007: Ready, fire, aim
III. GOVERNING. The two Americans: hard and soft
Angela Job's resilience
Against "national greatness conservatism"
Summa contra Reagan nostalgia
The left's plea for materialistic politics
Constitutional monomania
Judicial activism, wise and not
The hard truth about "soft rights"
Oologah's, and America's, slide
A fraudulent "fairness"
Policing speech in Oakland
Liberalism's itch in Minneapolis
Chicago: from the White City to the Green City
Our moralizing tax code
"Electronic morphine" on the Ohio River
Prohibition II: interestingly selective
Being green at Ben & Jerry's
The tyranny of the small picture
Draining the reservoir of reverence
United 93: "we've go to do it ourselves"
Nothing changes everything
IV. SENSIBILITIES AND SENSITIVITIES. Narcissism as news
The speciesism of featherless bipeds
What we owe to what we eat
The Holocaust: handcrafted
The "daring" of the avant-garde yet again
Anti-Semitism across the political spectrum
When Harry remet Hanne
Cars as mobile sculpture
Hog heaven: happy one hundredth, Harley
Restoration at 346 Madison
Starbucks, Nail salons, and the aesthetic imperative
Manners vs. social autism
A punctuation vigilante
America's literature of regret
Chief Illiniwek and the indignation industry
Christmas at our throats
V. LEARNING. National amnesia and planting cut flowers
A sensory blitzkrieg of surfaces
"Philosophy teaching by examples"
Fascinating contingencies
Ed Schools vs. Education
This just in from the professors: conservatism is a mental illness
The law of group polarization in academia
Antioch College's epitaph
A scholar's malfeasance gunned down
Juggling scarves in the therapeutic nation
Nature, nurture, and Larry Summer's sin
AP Harry applies to college
Teaching minnows the pleasure of precision
VI. GAMES. Raising Michael Oher
The man from Moro Bottom
"Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer!"
Randy Shannon's realism
The NFL: an intensification of reality
Speaking SportsCenterese
The movie, and the truth, about Texas Western
VII. THE GAME. "Remember 1908!"
Jackie Robinson: the possible and the inevitable
Ted Williams: "I can't stand it, I'm so good"
Roberto Clemente: "We think he can hit"
Greg Maddux: "Watch this: the first-base coach may be going to the hospital"
Take me out to the Metric
Elias knows EVERYTHING
The game's gifted eccentrics
Don't beat a dead horse in the mouth
The Golden Age
Pet Rose, always hustling
The precious, precarious equipoise
Barry Bonds: enhanced and devalued
The methodical Mr. Aaron
Realism among the RiverDogs
Striving for motel years
Seeking anonymous perfection
"Where's baseball?"
VIII. WONDERING. Incest at "a genetically discreet remove"
An intellectual hijacking
From Dayton, TN to Rhode Island's Committee on Fish and Game
Earth: not altogether intelligently designed
Intelligent design and unintelligent movies
The Pope, the neurosurgeon, and the ghost in the machine
How biology buttresses morality, which conforms to . . . biology
The Space Program's search for . . . us
Nuclear waste: that's us
The loudest sound in human experience
L = BB + pw + BC/BF
Wonder what we are for? wondering
IX. MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH. Golly, what did Jon DO?
The long dying of Louise Will.