A Weird Spiritual Trick to Disarm Killer Doubts
If you’re like me, when you sit down to write you have a devilish voice in your head. The voice says you’re a failure, your writing will never be good or excellent, and why bother? Read more
Popular History Books are Being Marred by (Progressive) Ideology
By definition, popular histories ought to appeal to ordinary book buyers and -readers rather than specialists. And the best among them were not meant to comfort political activists, either. Now that has changed. Read more
Two Lessons from a Day of Rejections
Rejection can — can! — be a good thing. Writers must be mulish. You want two lessons from a disappointing week? Here they are. Read more
As I Please: Using Computers and Books to Report
I am a lover and a practitioner of interviewing people and mining archives. Yet two lesser-known forms of data gathering can be good supplements and even substitutes. Read more
As I Please: The 1970s Edition
The inaugural column is meant to be short versions of what magazine editors used to call “brights”—upbeat, inspiring, or humorous articles. Read more
Want to Write More and Write Better? Try These Three Writing Warm-ups
Writing drills or exercises have a bad name in the professional world. They should be thought of as warm-ups like those Olympic athletes and professional musicians practice. You need them to hone your game. Read more
Head Trip: A Page Turner about a False Prophet (Review #6)
In our era of the opioid epidemic, the influence of Dr. Timothy Leary, a guru of LSD, looks less benign than a recent (page-turner! of a) book makes him out to be. Read more
How Stephen King’s On Writing Can Help You Crank Out a Book (Review #5)
Many people think we writers are pretentious know-it-alls. With this in mind, you might think bookshelves are buckling are under the weight of writing-as-a-craft memoirs. But you would be wrong. They aren’t. Which helps explain the appeal of Mr. King’s book. Read more
A Diplomat Important Enough to Be Hated (Review #4)
John Gunther Dean’s career milestones sound almost like a recruiting ad for the Foreign Service. His action-packed memoir got me thinking: What if we Americans got the political leaders we wanted? Read more
Fast, Pray, Give: Why a Simple Christian Spiritual Book is Better than Famous Rivals (Review #3)
Though less well known than 1990s spiritual blockbusters such as “Tuesdays with Morrie” or “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,” Father Ronald Rolheiser’s “The Holy Longing” is not only simpler but also more practical and challenging. Read more