Tag: American Scholar

An ephemeral birthmark is a rare gift, connecting me to generations spanning the centuries.

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Our march from one level of gratification to the next has imposed huge costs—most recently in a credit binge that nearly sank the global economy. But the issue here isn’t only one of overindulgence or a wayward consumer culture. Even as the economy slowly recovers, many people still feel out of balance and unsteady. It’s […]

Why do some people look back and others refuse to? What are the pleasures of  “nostalgia”? The word itself has its etymology in the Greek nostos(homecoming) + algia (pain), but the condition is more multifaceted, combined of equal parts of homesickness, self-indulgence, sentimentality, and an alertness to the genuine, confected, or nonexistent pleasures of other times, other ages, […]

Once the lords of East Africa, the Maasai have been close to peerless in the modern age for maintaining the continuity of their traditions—traditions now imperiled by the tentacles of the market and by technology, as cell phones and cheap Chinese motorcycles, like the one we rode, upend the very possibility of isolation. Compulsory and […]

The dream of the “Food Movement” is for all meat to be humanely raised and locally sourced so we can all be “conscientious carnivores.” In The American Scholar, James McWilliams looks at a dilemma the Food Movement is facing: Can animals be raised humanely if the end goal is not for animals to live a […]