Steveawiggins

LATEST ARTICLES ( 4570 )

• Idol Thoughts

  

  The Enlightenment led, in some respects, to a condescending view of the past. Historians know, for example, that the basics of science and engineering predate... Read more

  Posted on 28 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Fear of Religions

  

  There’s a narrative of fear in Christianity that seems to have been absent at the beginning. This is evident when driving the highways of America where you’ll... Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Night of the Living

  

  The New Yorker view of the world, so the joke goes, sees the five boroughs in great details, then a very thin New Jersey across the Hudson with a vague... Read more

  Posted on 26 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Iron Ages

  

  I find myself in Pittsburgh again. We set out from the former steel city of Bethlehem and ended up in the former steel city on the other side of the state. I’m... Read more

  Posted on 25 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Cool Cash

  

  The seller’s market is the place to be in a capitalist society. Last year, when we were looking for a house, it was a seller’s market. Our realtor said he’d... Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Rock Solid

  

  Old interests don’t die so much as they become sublimated. As a child I picked up a cheap “gem display” in a small cardboard box at a yard sale, probably for a... Read more

  Posted on 23 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Wag the Book

  

  I was pulling together a bibliography, you know, like one does, when I realized just how outdated the usual formats are. Particularly the trinity invoked at... Read more

  Posted on 22 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Mere Humanities

  

  Categories, while necessary, can be troubling things. One place to see this clearly is in academia, which is itself a category. Read more

  Posted on 21 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Thunder Towers

  

  It sounded like brontide. The Martin Tower, the tallest in the Lehigh Valley and once corporate center for Bethlehem Steel came down yesterday morning. Read more

  Posted on 20 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Revisiting Mesopotamia

  

  As a refresher on my own ancient history, I picked up Tammi J. Schneider’s An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion. This was one of those books that... Read more

  Posted on 19 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Drowning in Words

  

  One of the features of this blog, which as inclined more lately toward books of all sorts rather than simply religion, is that I only write one post per book... Read more

  Posted on 18 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Price of Learning

  

  Holy Horror, as some are painfully aware, is priced at $45. Even those of us in publishing have lessons we must learn, and one of them is that writing a trade... Read more

  Posted on 17 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• The Heart of Publishing

  

  My heart goes out to academic authors. It really does. They labor over a book important to their field and see it come out costing near triple digits and... Read more

  Posted on 16 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Digging Bad?

  

  Academics, as a rule, focus on books by other academics. Theirs is a specialized vocabulary with specific goals (tenure, then an Ivy League position). Read more

  Posted on 15 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Bradbury’s Dream

  

  There’s a Ray Bradbury story—I can’t recall the title, but with the Internet that’s just a lame excuse—where explorers on Venus are being driven insane by the... Read more

  Posted on 14 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Linking In

  

  Like many in the internet age, I have most of my “connections” online. It’s somewhat of a rarity to be invited, for example, to connect on LinkedIn by someone... Read more

  Posted on 13 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Mother of Stone

  

  One thing we all have in common is mothers. Whether it’s the mysteries of biology or something more spiritual than that, the connection lasts forever. Read more

  Posted on 12 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• A Nightmare Or Two

  

  Some books are complex enough to require a slow reading. Alan E. Bernstein’s The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian... Read more

  Posted on 11 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Dandy Lions

  

  O great—just what I need right now. I knew lawn care would soon become a necessary avocation after buying a house, but this I did not expect. Read more

  Posted on 10 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• On Publishing

  

  I fear I may be transitioning. I may actually be becoming someone who knows something about publishing. Reading about the merger between Cengage and McGraw... Read more

  Posted on 09 May 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY