At the heart of any search for meaning lie several basic questions that have spurred seekers throughout the ages: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How shall I live, and why? Rabbi Rami Shapiro has addressed these... Read More

Martin Thielen credits religion with having contributed to the betterment of the world by establishing educational institutions like Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, and Yale; building and servicing hospitals; creating the first charitable... Read More

Suppose you chopped down a tree and then regretted it because, after all, a tree is a beautiful thing in nature. What to do? Firewood? Board feet? Or, you might consider unchopping it by following the instructions of W. S. Merwin, a man... Read More

Evolution is an ongoing process, as Charles Darwin famously argued, and so, as would be expected, the English language has undergone radical change since 1859 when Darwin published Origin of Species, which still resonates mightily. For... Read More

For those who doubt that immortality is possible in the natural order of things, Gene Logsdon, an Ohio farmer who has done a lot of hard hoeing and hard thinking in his eighty years, nominates chickweed and pigweed as plausible... Read More

“Why learn about water?” asks the first sentence this scholarly and impassioned tome and then for more than 600 pages of dense prose—interspersed with charts, graphs, photographs, and the occasional chemical formula—John A.... Read More

It’s perhaps a bit disingenuous for Angela Pelster to declare that her marvelous collection of essays is not a memoir. She might argue that nature is the principle subject, with an emphasis on trees; trees communicating with one... Read More

Basil, carrots, green beans, lettuce, potatoes, and tomatoes—these six common garden inhabitants are the perfect introductory plants to get kids interested in cultivating their own plot of land and preparing their own food. Katherine... Read More