Ben, Author at Common Reader

Where’s Waldo Now?

Waldo accrued rather a lot of wisdom in his travels. His books teach us to pay attention, if we want to spot the hidden details of the universe.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Disappointment and Horror

By John Griswold

We expect to get our way and often think we will get away with cheap and easy and quick. Nowhere is this more obvious than with food.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Why Lessons in Chemistry Reduced Me to Tears

By Jeannette Cooperman

Some griefs, like my overreaction to “Lessons in Chemistry,” overlap with our own past hurts.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat” Is the Best Halloween Song You Have Never Heard

By Ben Fulton

“The Mercy Seat” is a five-minute tour of a death-row inmate’s dirge and final thoughts before death by electric chair pits an ancient Old Testament object against New Testament teachings, turns everyday objects into hallucinations, and laughs at the idea of knowing truth from falsehood, or justice from mercy, when faced with death.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Not-So-Random Acts of Kindness

By John Griswold

Shepherd’s Centers is a network of fifty-seven affiliate chapters across the country that offers some 165,000 people “services such as transportation, handy helpers, friendly visits, grocery shopping, and respite care to help older adults remain living in their own homes and communities.”

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

On Losing One’s Letters and One’s Mind

By Jeannette Cooperman

These are tiny disturbances of the domestic sphere, brief incursions of chaos. They remind me of the finite limits of our budget, my patience, and my life span.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

St. Louis’s Native Past Comes Alive

By Jeannette Cooperman

“The U.S. Constitution was derived from the Iroquois [Haudenosaunee] Confederacy,” he points out, and surreptitiously, I jot a note. How did I not know that?

Society & Culture | Uncategorized | Dispatches

Thomas Sowell Is at It Again

By Gerald Early

If Amiri Baraka was the godfather of the 1960s Black Arts Movement, Sowell is the godfather of Black conservatism. And Black conservatism is as important to African American Studies as the Black Arts Movement no matter how disagreeable many of us in the field may find many of Black conservatism’s assumptions to be.

Reviews

Socialism 2023 Was the Sound of Grievances, but No Solutions

By John Griswold

Attendees of Socialism 2023, a four-day conference in Chicago over Labor Day weekend, wanted freedom from the existing system but admitted its dominion (the “dom” in “freedom”) and the movement’s current lack of large-scale agency in it.

Essays

Making Merry Adventure from Sophisticated French History

By Steven C. Hause

France: An Adventure History remains, from cover to cover, a truly different history. It is long and densely packed with knowledge, just not told in a traditional narrative.

Reviews