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Eric Scheske

Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives, by Joseph Epstein

A Micro-Review/Essay “I am indebted to these writers.” Paean. Nineteen of them. An essayist removes his hat, lowers his head, and says “thanks.” The essayist convinces us these subjects are great. We then understand that the essayist is great. Like recognizes like. Max Beerbohm’s prose is difficult to

Are We Really Supposed to Believe Psychedelics Gave Us Our Souls?

A mushroom? Or God? I didn’t fully appreciate the implication of The Stoned Ape theory until listening to Lex Fridman’s interview with Brian Muraresku. Muraresku recently published The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name, which claims psychedelics, in particular psilocybin, has made huge,

Mint Julep: The Percy Battle?

Poet Will Percy provided this recipe for the Mint Julep in his autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee: First you needed excellent bourbon whisky; rye or Scotch would not do at all. Then you put half an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and merely dampened it with

Jimmy Buffet: Hymnographer

How Jimmy Buffet can help cultivate the virtue of detachment I started listening to Jimmy Buffet songs when I was in law school. Though I was ambitiously studying hard so I could get a job with a powerful law firm, I was drawn to Buffet's music because it

How to be a Good Agrarian

I hung out with Michael Jordan outside Chicago about twenty years ago. No, not basketball Michael Jordan. I'm talking about Michael Jordan, the English professor from Hillsdale College. We met at a Touchstone conference at Mundelein Seminary. He saw my name tag and said he enjoyed my articles.

Toni Morrison's Rejection Letters

Melina Moe at the Los Angeles Review of Books

Russia’s Freaky History with the Cult of Mother Earth

The Russian digs Mother Earth. This has been the case from Russia’s earliest years when dark and brutal paganism soaked her culture in blood.[1] The Russian venerates Mother Earth for her black depths, for the crops of life she provides, and for the resting home she gives at