Essay | Summer 2023
Contributing Editor
Alan Jacobs
Alan Jacobs, a contributing editor of The New Atlantis and the author of the now-retired Text Patterns blog on TheNewAtlantis.com, is a distinguished professor of the humanities in the honors program of Baylor University. His recent books include Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind (Penguin, 2020), The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2018) and How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds (Currency, 2017). His homepage is here: http://www.ayjay.org.
In The New Atlantis
Essay | Winter 2023
A Humanism of the Abyss
At a moment when people who don’t share our identity feel alien, Oliver Sacks’s classic book about reaching catatonic patients has much to teach us.
Correspondence | Winter 2023
Essay | Spring 2022
Essay | Winter 2021
Essay | Spring 2019
After Technopoly
Technocratic solutionism is dying. To replace it, we must learn again the creation and reception of myth.
Essay | Summer/Fall 2017
Wokeness and Myth on Campus
Crying “free exchange of ideas!” misses the cultural meaning of protest in a society coming apart.
Essay | Winter 2016
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Miss Marple and the Problem of Modern Identity
On being known by one's neighbors versus being known by the state
Online Exclusive | October 19, 2014
October 19, 2014
Online Exclusive | October 19, 2014
October 19, 2014
Edupunk’d
Can the innovative ‘do-it-yourself’ education movement really replace the dying university model?
Online Exclusive | October 19, 2014
October 19, 2014
The Online State of Nature
Why has Internet discourse devolved into a “war of every man against every man”?
Essay | Winter 2014
Online Exclusive | September 25, 2013
September 25, 2013
Rethinking Innovation
What’s the difference between new ideas that are good, and those that are merely novel?
Christianity and the Future of the Book
Scrolls, screens, and how technologies of reading shape theology.
Review | Spring 2011
Review | Spring 2010
Essay | Summer 2009
Essay
World of Wonders
Neal Stephenson’s massive new novel is obsessive, adolescent, and thoroughly delightful
Review | Spring 2009
Books
- Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind (Penguin, 2020)
- The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2018)
- How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds (Currency, 2017)
- “The Book of Common Prayer”: A Biography (Princeton, 2013)
- The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford, 2011)
- A new critical edition of W. H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Princeton, 2011)
- Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant (Eerdmans, 2010)
- Original Sin: A Cultural History (HaperOne, 2008)
- Looking Before and After: Testimony and the Christian Life (Eerdmans, 2008)
- The Narnian: The Imagination of C. S. Lewis (Harper, 2005)
- Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truth-Telling (Eerdmans, 2004)
- Must Christianity Be Violent? Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology (Brazos Press, 2003)
- A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love (Westview Press, 2001)
- A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age (Brazos Press, 2001)
- What Become of Wystan: Change and Continuity in Auden's Poetry (University of Arkansas, 1998)
Other Publications
- “On the Value of Thought Experiments,” The American Conservative, August 27, 2015
- “A Religious Liberty Thought Experiment,” The American Conservative, August 26, 2015
- “Human Life and Moral Intuitions,” The American Conservative, August 11, 2015
- “A Word to the ‘Deeply Troubled,’” The American Conservative, August 10, 2015
- “The Bought Grace of Life,” The American Conservative, August 7, 2015
- “Code Fetishists and Normolaters,” The American Conservative, July 29, 2015
- “Disciplinary Bulverism,” The American Conservative, July 22, 2015
- “The Value of Disagreement,” The American Conservative, July 9, 2015
- “How Sexy Was Kant?,” The American Conservative, July 7, 2015
- “The Six Axioms of Politico-Judicial Logic,” The American Conservative, June 30, 2015
- “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd,” The American Conservative, June 26, 2015
- “How I Became a Soccer Fan,” The American Conservative, June 24, 2015
- “Life in the Garrison,” The American Conservative, June 10, 2015
- “In Praise of Private Colleges,” The American Conservative, June 9, 2015
- “Lost in the Cosmos,” Books & Culture, March/April 2015
- “79 Theses on Technology. For Disputation,” The Infernal Machine, March 27, 2015
- “On Not Defending the Humanities,” Snakes and Ladders, January 29, 2015
- “Kurzweilian Whiggery,” Snakes and Ladders, January 24, 2015
- “The View from the Glass Cage,” Books & Culture, January/February 2015
- “Assignment: Commentary and Anthology,” Snakes and Ladders, December 30, 2014
- “A Weird from Sturk to Finnic,” Books & Culture, July/August 2014
- “The Two Cultures, Then and Now,” Books & Culture, March/April 2014
- “JSTOR's Hidden Power,” The Atlantic, Deceber 10, 2013
- “No Apologies,” Books & Culture, November/December 2013
- “The Uses of Ignorance,” Books & Culture, November 2013
- “The Mystery of Sarah Losh,” Books & Culture, July/August 2013
- “Fathers and Daughters,” Books & Culture, May/June 2013
- “Lena Dunham’s Inviolable Self,” First Things, May 2013
- “Just-So Stories,” Books & Culture, January/February 2013
- “The Man Who Delivered the Computer,” Books & Culture, September/October 2012
- “So Blessed a Liturgy,” Books & Culture, March/April 2012
- “The Ghost Writer,” Books & Culture, November/December 2011
- “A Prophet Wrongly Honored,” First Things, June/July 2011
- “Overloaded,” Books & Culture, May/June 2011
- “The Poet’s Nature Subdued,” Books & Culture, March/April 2011
- “Recommended Reading,” Books & Culture, January/February 2011
- “Rethinking Innovation,” Big Questions Online, December 21, 2010
- “A Not-So-Distant Mirror,” Big Questions Online, November 18, 2010
- “Edupunk’d,” Big Questions Online, October 19, 2010
- “The Idea of the Book,” Books & Culture, November/December 2010
- “The Online State of Nature,” Big Questions Online, August 30, 2010
- “Book Cultures,” Books & Culture, July/August 2010
- “Man of Sorrows,” Books & Culture, Jan-Feb 2010
- “Beyond the Wild Wood,” First Things, October 2009
- “Choose Your Own Adventure,” Books & Culture, September/October 2009
- “Pedantic Park,” First Things, August/September 2009
- “Blessed Are the Green of Heart,” First Things, May 2009
- “Gardening and Governing,” Books & Culture, April 3, 2009
- “The Way, the Truth, and Philip Jenkins,” First Things, March 2009
- “A Religion for Atheists,” First Things, February 2009
- “The Poet’s Prose,” Books & Culture, Jan.-Feb. 2009
- “Do-It-Yourself Tradition,” First Things, January 2009
- “A Classic Case,” First Things, November 2008
- “Reading, Writing, and Reformation,” First Things, October 2008
- “A Ne’er-Do-Well Returns,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2008
- “In the Garden,” Cabinet, Fall 2008
- “Amis Amiss,” First Things, June/July 2008
- “The Life of Trees,” Books & Culture, July 1, 2008
- “Too Much Faith in Faith,” Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2008
- “Come On, You Call This a Manifesto?,” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2008
- “A Commonplace Book,” First Things, May 2008
- “The Conscience of an Anglican,” Books & Culture, December 24, 2007
- “Making Trade-Offs,” Books & Culture, December 3, 2007
- “On the Recent Publication of Kahlil Gibran’s Collected Works,” First Things, November 2007
- “Sentences,” Books & Culture, October 8, 2007
- “Reading the Signs,” First Things, October 2007
- “The Future of Atheism,” Books & Culture, September 10, 2007
- “The Youngest Brother’s Tale,” Books & Culture, September 1, 2007
- “Overloaded,” Books & Culture, August 13, 2007
- “Amplifying Charity,” Books & Culture, July 9, 2007
- “Waiting for Harry,” Books & Culture, June 25, 2007
- “Remembering Auden,” Books & Culture, June 4, 2007
- “Jane Kramer and the Feast of St. Martin Elginbrod,” Books & Culture, May 8, 2007
- “Serendipity,” Books & Culture, April 2, 2007
- “Blessedly Unnecessary,” Books & Culture, March 5, 2007
- “How to Read,” Books & Culture, March 1, 2007
- “Some Fanged Enemy of Christendom,” Books & Culture, February 12, 2007
- “The Know-Nothing Party,” Books & Culture, February 5, 2007
- “In Search of Eden,” First Things, February 2007
- “The Politics of Long Joy,” Books & Culture, January 12, 2007
- “Graphic Violence,” Books & Culture, December 11, 2006
- “Code Breakers,” First Things, August/September 2006
- “Goodbye, Blog,” Books & Culture, May 1, 2006
- “To Be a Christian College,” First Things, April 2006
- “Choose Life,” Books & Culture, March 1, 2006
- “Bran Flakes and Harmless Drudges,” Books & Culture, January 1, 2006
- “The professor, the Christina, and the storyteller,” The Boston Globe, December 4, 2005
- “Opportunity Costs,” Books & Culture, November 1, 2005
- “City poet,” The Boston Globe, September 25, 2005
- “Robert Alter’s Fidelity,” First Things, August/September 2005
- “The Lord of Limit,” Books & Culture, May 1, 2004
- “A Bible for Everyone,” First Things, December 2003
- “Whose Natural Theology?,” Books & Culture, November 1, 2003
- “What Narrative Theology Forgot,” First Things, August/September 2003
- “Leon Kass and the Genesis of Wisdom,” First Things, June/July 2003
- “The Re-Invention of Love,” Books & Culture, March 1, 2003
- “The Virtues of Resistance,” Books & Culture, September 1, 2002
- “Life Among the Cyber-Amish,” Books & Culture, July 1, 2002
- “Computer Control,” Books & Culture, May 1, 2002
- “Shame the Devil,” Books & Culture, March 1, 2002
- “C. S. Lewis Then and Now,” First Things, March 2002
- “Wole Soyinka’s Outrage,” Books & Culture, November 1, 2001
- “Auden and the Limits of Poetry,” First Things, August/September 2001
- “Narrating Ethics,” First Things, May 2001
- “In Brief,” Books & Culture, January 1, 2001
- “The Only Honest Man,” Books & Culture, May 1, 2000
- “George Eliot: Good without God,” First Things, April 2000
- “Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (1941),” First Things, March 2000
- “Review Essay: Preachers without Poetry,” First Things, August/September 1999
- “The Liberal Neoplantonist?,” First Things, January 1999
- “The Editor and the Exile,” Books & Culture, November 1, 1998
- “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” Books & Culture, May 1, 1998
- “Revenge of the Scroll,” Books & Culture, January 1, 1998
- “Only Connect,” First Things, November 1997
- “The Bible Tells Me So,” First Things, October 1997
- “A Bible Fit for Children,” First Things, May 1997
- “In on the Kill,” First Things, February 1997
- “Flags, Tradition, and Charity,” First Things, November 1996
- “Martha Nussbaum, Poets’ Defender,” First Things, October 1996
- “Dowsing in Scripture,” First Things, October 1995
- “Go(o)d in Iris Murdoch,” First Things, February 1995
