“I had no idea how cynical the Book of Ecclesiastes could be,” I told my writing group a couple of weeks ago. “It also contradicts itself over and over again: Life sucks, and then it’s beautiful. There’s no reward in heaven, but God cares about us. Rich people can’t be trusted, yet they are chosen…

Today’s “Talk of the Nation” broadcast will be devoted to Mormonism: what it is, what it’s not, and why so many non-Mormons are afraid of it. I don’t know who all the guests are, but I’m thrilled that one of them will be Joanna Brooks of Religion Dispatches. I find her writing to be both…

Tomorrow, I am burying my father’s ashes in a little cemetery in southern Illinois, where he can be laid to rest near his parents. It’s an odd kind of closure. Some of you know that my father crashed back into my life rather suddenly last October after a 26-year radio silence. He had abandoned our…

Over the weekend I finished Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, which still ranks in Amazon’s top twenty after almost three months in release. I predict a long (and well-deserved) run for it on the bestseller lists. The book centers around William Dodd, a historian…

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