The First COLLECTION
Letter from Editor & Publisher
Dear Friends,
Much like a person can consume fast food daily, so can their minds regularly ingest content that offers a momentary pleasure yet leaves them feeling unsatisfied in the end. This must be why they call it the "media diet."
For those seeking to engage in a meaningful reading experience, it is our hope that our inaugural Collection will serve as a welcome oasis apart from contemporary media, which serves increasingly more junk than substance.
This first issue is the product of the labors of talented writers, poets, and thinkers seeking timeless truths and beauty at a time when few . It has been ensure that the writings are as fulfilling as they are varied. In other words, this is our first of many attempts to serve you with a multi-course meal that will leave your mind elevated rather than confused, your spirits refreshed rather than cast down.
We wish you a great reading experience.
Sincerely,
EDITOR & PUBLISHER
Featured
Year of the Plague: Jake Gardner and the Ghosts of 2020
Returning to a night in Omaha that rattled the nation, Matthew Chabin presents another side of an old friend in the middle of the tragedy. An intimate meditation on the fragility of friendship in a black-and-white age, Chabin calls for understanding over condemning one's enemies, including his own.
Interiew: Erich Prince speaks with powerful senator
Senator Lankford's Timely Reminder of the American Ethos
Essays
A Prison Love Story
Writing from behind the bars, Antoine Davis shares his own story of romance most of us–as well as his love's family and friends–would find ill-advised.
As I Think about Pope Francis
Joe Weil, a poet, professor, and Catholic, reflects on the death of Pope Francis, what he loved about the man, and what he hopes the late Pope sees differently on the other side of this world.
When Therapy Fails Artists
As a challenge to conventional advice about rest and recovery, poet Nada Faris explains the importance of working amid suffering for those who derive meaning and inspiration from their craft. Shakespeare, Woolf, and Orwell did some of their best work in times of despair, after all.
Engineering Morality in the Age of Driverless Cars
Once the realm of ivory tower thought experiments, the trolley problem is increasingly relevant in the real world as algorithms replace the human behind the wheel, argues philosopher Jimmy Alfonso Licon.
Jimmy Alfonso Licon
Rousseau, the Letter Writer
A new book by Christopher Kelly and Eve Grace explores the letters of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, including many previously left unpublished. These letters provide insight into the mind of the French thinker, a man whose ideas influenced revolutions and political thinking the world over.
Christopher Kelly
What Moby Dick Still Teaches Us
Andy Owen, who served in the British military in the Middle East, revisits the 19th century classic, believing it can shed light on some of the most important questions of our day, when it comes to both foreign policy and ourselves.
Andy Owen
The Enduring Question at the Heart of Gone with the Wind
Sadhika Pant revisits the 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a book recently targeted for cancellation by certain activists. Pant suggests that Scarlett O’Hara and Ashley Wilkes represent two dueling approaches to living, and this dichotomy invites nothing short of civilizational questions.
Sadhika Pant
The Clash and the Quest
In this essay, Alexander Zubatov traces how the stories that fill the boundless canvas of Western canon are, in essence, reflections of two contrasting Homeric archetypes. Venturing beyond the literary, the motifs offer the frames through which one can interpret existence itself.
Alexander Zubatov
While We Were in Motion
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
Henri Mattila
Exit Terra
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
Erich J. Prince
Other
Jonathan Church speaks with the French filmmaker who–exemplifying near-divine accuracy–foretold the end of Iran's nuclear program Visions of Hell: What One Man Sees in October 7th
