How Much Crime Is Too Much Crime?

Criminal (In)Justice is an accessible, highly readable book that does an excellent job presenting the counterarguments to the anti-mass incarceration, defund the police crowd. If you want to know arguments and the evidence for them, this book is a concise, painless way to learn.

Is Conflict the Only Way to Tell a Story?

Stories only work when there is conflict—that is the common wisdom. I grew up not knowing, or I would never have chosen to write. Only later, too late, was the truism hammered into my head, and the experience was as unpleasant as that cliché suggests.

“Anywhere But Here”: Exploring Black Flight in St. Louis (Part 1)

As of July 2022, Blacks totaled 128,387, or 44.8 percent, of St. Louis’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2019, the number of Black St. Louisans numbered 136,167, or 45.3 percent, of the city’s population. The migratory trends among African Americans here raises the question if this is a new-age forced migration, and if so, to what extent?

The Myth of a Storybook Life

In her 2023 biography, Becoming Ezra Jack Keats, Virginia McGee Butler challenges assumptions about Keats—indeed about all picture book authors—a mission for which Keats, who was deeply invested in challenging stereotypes, would have offered his hearty approval.

A Taylor Swift Fan Experiences the Rites of the Altar—But From a Distance

Taylor’s concerts serve as sacred places where fans come together and experience collective effervescence with fellow fans. One may not have any Swifties in their day-to-day life; thus, an occasion like this allows us to band together with those who also cling to Taylor’s lyrics. Every lyric, every melody is chanted with a fervor that surpasses mere admiration; it is a manifestation of devotion.

The Real Stanley Kowalski

From Poland to St. Louis with dreams, back to Europe to fight, back to St. Louis to drink, and make shoes, and die. He had no idea his name would live on—let alone make generations of playgoers wince and recoil. The blame for that can be divvied up between Tennessee’s father and one of his lovers.

Shoulders Back, Tummy Tucked…

Posture, “the position or bearing of the body,” carries information. My slump is insecure, preoccupied, habitual. Kneeling at work was an eagerness for communion with my colleagues. Much as I roll my eyes over liturgical dance (when it is self-conscious and silly) or arms that are stagily lifted to the heavens, something does feel different—wide open and vulnerable—when your arms are lifted high, not crossed over your bosom in self-defense.

What Fresh Hell Is This?

August 22 will mark the 120th anniversary of her birth—a good day, if you are a devotee, to mix a martini with Dorothy Parker American Gin (the owner of its New York Distillery exchanged Dorothy Parker vows with his bride at their wedding) or take a tour with Kevin Fitzpatrick, founder of the Dorothy Parker Society.

Drowning in Dopamine

We are drowning in dopamine, the neurotransmitter our brain releases with even the smallest reward. Once humans walked miles to pick a single, delicious fig from a tree, Lembke says. Now we order a box on Amazon and eat them one after another. We have more access to larger quantities of more potent, delicious, or novel rewards. We have druggified our pleasures.

May The Lambs Flourish

Though you might have glimpsed Ethel Barrymore disguised by a tuxedo years earlier, in 1974 The Lambs became one of the first all-male clubs to admit women—well ahead of the Athenaeum, the Kiwanis Club, the University Club, the Bohemian Club, the Olympic Club, the New York Athletic Club, the Missouri Athletic Club…. These days, almost half the Lambs are women.

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