The last of the Febreads, and Marching on

So many good book reviews this week. First, here's Rafia Zakaria in The Baffler, arguing that superficial positive reviews are infantilizing for women and people of color, marginalizing them from the intellectual conversation under the guise of supporting them: In Praise of Negative Reviews

Here are some negative book reviews of the Steven Pinker scientism joint.
Nick Spencer, Theos, Enlightenment and Progress, or why Steven Pinker is wrong
Peter Harrison, ABC Religion & Ethics, The Enlightenment of Steven Pinker
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Edges of Reason

The best book review (and probably, overall piece) I read this week was Brad East's engagement with Patrick Deneen's How Liberalism Failed and Jamie Smith's Awaiting the King in LA Review of Books. It's a great overview of the debate over political theology and how Christianity should relate to the system of liberalism: Holy Ambivalence

That led me to this overview of Deneen's book, as well as the author's blog:
Patrick J Deneen, ABC Religion & Ethics, The Triumphant Failure of Liberalism
Brad East, Resident Theologian, Principles of Luddite pedagogy

And many other solid reviews here as well (OK, the last one is a movie).
Park MacDougald, American Affairs, Fascists and Revolutionaries

Justin Lee, First Things, Bros Against Humanity
Catherine Cusick, Longreads, An Education in Doubt
Kelly Jane Torrance, National Review, The Struggle for Meaning
Anna Leszkiewicz, New Statesman, “Senior year burns brightly. There is a vividness in worlds coming to an end”: Lady Bird’s aesthetic of memory

A varied assortment of national politics griping, from (legitimately) fake news, to the President's circle of corruption, to the unmitigated malice even in the face of death on social media, to America's depressing child mortality rates, to the true purpose of guns:
Kevin D Williamson, National Review, An Epidemic of Dishonesty on the Right
David A Graham, The Atlantic, Trump's Real Scandal is Hiding in Plain Sight

Samuel James, MereO (Inklingations), The Wrong Spite of History

Matthew Loftus, America, The United States is dangerous for children. How we can help more of them live to see adulthood?

Christine Emba, WaPo, We All Know What Guns Are Really For

Also on the political front is this great profile of Eric Metaxas and his craven capitulation to Trump, as candidate and now as President. Illuminating but challenging to read is the full email exchange between the author and subject, in which he (Metaxas) begins graciously, but gradually grows more and more towards the very likeness of Godwin's Law (not to mention Poe's). A response to some of his comments by fellow Bonhoeffer biographer Charles Marsh is also intriguing.

Jon Ward, Yahoo News, Author Eric Metaxas, evangelical intellectual, chose Trump, and he's sticking with him
Jon Ward, Medium, My Email Exchange with Eric Metaxas
Charles Marsh, Medium, Charles Marsh responds to Eric Metaxas

Leslie Jamison is simply a phenomenal writer. I wish she'd engaged more with Martha Nussbaum's ideas on retribution at the end of the anger piece, but these are both worth reading.
Leslie Jamison, VQR Online, The Breakup Museum
Leslie Jamison, NYT Mag, I Used to Insist I Didn't Get Angry. Not Anymore.

In the vein of Leslie Jamison, here are several pieces chronicling female pain, from the surrealistic trauma of recovery from an aneurysm, to the difficulty of caring for children when they and you are far from home, to overcoming the shame associated with painful sex, and finally, political ostracism for speaking the truth: 
Emily Carter Roiphe, Longreads, The Hotel of Multiple Realities
Rachel Pieh Jones, The Other Journal, Split Me Open
Joy Pedrow Skarka, Fathom, Having Painful Sex

Mona Charen, NYT, I'm Glad I Got Booed at CPAC

Some of these pains may affect women more directly or frequently, but can be shared by men as well. Matthew Loftus shares the fear of needing medical care for a child when you live where it's not as available; this great profile of Brendan Fraser adds a new voice to the #MeToo movement:

Matthew Loftus, Making the little things available for little people

Zach Baron, GQ, Whatever Happened to Brendan Fraser?

I didn't really like this piece; it basically argues that social movements should appropriate little "tools" from religious practices to strengthen themselves, and it does so in a way that makes it seem that she thinks they function just as effectively stripped of their source and context. I'm open to that argument from some angles, but this one didn't work.
Danielle Celermajer, ABC Religion & Ethics, Shelter in a Hurricane: Muscular Silence and Creative Resistance

Urban issues:
Ariel Aberg-Riger, CityLab, When America's Basic Housing Unit Was a Bed, Not a House
Kate Wagner, The Atlantic, City Noise Might Be Making You Sick

Priya Fielding-Singh, Los Angeles Times, Why do poor Americans eat so unhealthfully? Because junk food is the only indulgence they can afford

Daryl Crouch, CT Pastors, How to Serve Your City When You Aren't a Megachurch

A poem:

Lauren K Alleyne, The Atlantic, Martin Luther King Jr Mourns Trayvon Martin

Gracy Olmstead writing Gracy Olmstead things: The American Conservative, Sourdough Bread and the Cult of Convenience

Science!
Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, Life Can Survive in the Most Mars-Like Place on Earth

Media in the digital age:
Maria Bustillos (with Karen K Ho), Columbia Journalism Review, Erasing History
Quinn Norton, The Atlantic, The New York Times Fired My Doppelgänger

Capitalism in a virtue-commodifying age:
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Rise of Woke Capital

On slave narratives and theology:
David Roach, CT, Reprint of Ex-slave's Theology Book Opens 'Underexplored Vista'
Joy Craun, CT, We Need to Read Stories of People Who Were Enslaved

And lastly:
Matthew Miller, MereO, Singing as Part of Family Worship