“Most Blessed of the Patriarchs” should be required reading for a general public that deserves more than easy evasions or tired indictments, for students who deserve an honest and unflinching engagement with the historical past, and for citizens seeking solutions for the problems of a troubled legacy.
Shuler wrote Thirteenth Turn, he tells us, to reveal the “still underdiscussed narrative of violence in American history,” which “includes both a kind of legal ‘justice,’ the death penalty, meted out by the state—with all the biases that kind of justice entails—as well as another, extralegal ‘justice,’ the democracy of the mob.”
The Common Reader, a publication of Washington University in St. Louis, offers the best in reviews, articles and creative non-fiction engaging the essential debates and issues of our time.
The word “stories” was used often at the annual NABIP Capitol Conference, held in the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, February 25-28, 2024. I went because I have my own stories of frustration with health care, and because I am interested when someone seems ready to try to make things better in the largely incomprehensible and vaguely menacing system we all rely on.
