God of the Gaps: On Ross Douthat’s Believe
My review of Ross Douthat’s Believe is out in the New York Review of Books.
Rack and manger: wasteful or improvident use of abundant supplies; lack of proper management; an occasional blog and even more occasional newsletter.
Recent posts on rack & manger.
- Lane on Lang. November 22, 2025.
- God of the Gaps: On Ross Douthat’s Believe. January 15, 2026.
- The Crisis Whisperer: A Profile of Adam Tooze. January 15, 2026.
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The Crisis Whisperer: A Profile of Adam Tooze
My profile of economist Adam Tooze is out today in The Guardian Long Read.
Intragalactic Traffic
And now we may need to lie down
“Mass extinction events seem to occur about once every 26 million years…. One theory is that this is the interval between instances of the solar system, rotating around the centre of our galaxy, passing through one of the galactic spiral arms…”
— Nick Wray, LRB Letters (11.20.25)
Lane on Lang
Anthony Lane on Bunny Lang is, as they say, self-recommending. (I’m tempted to say that Anthony Lane on any subject fits that bill.) If you need a push, look at the judo he does with “chestnut” here, in a riff on Lang’s “Caraway seeds on my tongue:”
What stirs the last phrase is an impatience with cliché. We are so accustomed to hearing sex extolled as “spicy” that it needs someone as brisk as Lang to break the habit. You can imagine her asking, “Well, what spice? Was it a nutmeg kiss, or a cinnamon quickie, or what?” Caraway gets rid of the old chestnut.
The Notable Nimbus
The Washington Post named The Nimbus one of its “50 Notable Works of Fiction from 2025.”
Something New
A maxim, a motto, a borrowed manifesto.
The Nimbus in The Christian Century
A wonderful review from Benjamin J. Dueholm in The Christian Century.
America Loves The Nimbus!
Ellen O’Connell Whittet reviews The Nimbus in America magazine.
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