The Givenness of Things
by Marilynne Robinson | 
What Are We Doing Here?
by Marilynne Robinson | 
Facing Unpleasant Facts
by George Orwell | 
Living, Thinking, Looking
by Siri Hustvedt | 
Against Everything
by Mark Greif | 
In Defense of Sanity
by G. K. Chesterton | 
Tremendous Trifles
by G. K. Chesterton | 
The Size of Thoughts
by Nicholson Baker | 
The Way the World Works
by Nicholson Baker | 
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community
by Wendell Berry | 
On Looking
by Lia Purpura | 
When I Was a Child I Read Books
by Marilynne Robinson | 
Books v. Cigarettes
by George Orwell | 
Vintage Didion
by Joan Didion | 
Farther Away
by Jonathan Franzen | 
What Are People For?
by Wendell Berry | 
The Last Empire
by Gore Vidal | 
Anarchism and Other Essays
by Emma Goldman | 
Things that Can and Cannot Be Said
by Arundhati Roy | 
The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell |
In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing "Calvinism" and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive "puritan" stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynne Robinson repeatedly sends her reader back to the primary texts that are central to the development of American culture but little read or acknowledged today.