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Jessica Hooten Wilson Subscribe

Jessica Hooten Wilson is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at John Brown University. She is the author of three books, including Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky & the Search for Influence and Reading Walker Percy's Novels. Her edited volume, Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West will be published by University of Notre Dame Press in 2020.

February 20, 2020|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Frank

Encountering Dostoevsky

by Jessica Hooten Wilson|

Monument to Fyodor Dostoevsky at the State Library in Moscow, Russia (i_photos/shutterstock.com).
In Joseph Frank's Lectures, we are taught how to read well, think well, and, as for all grand endeavors, to live with eschatological apprehension.

May 31, 2019|Fyodor Dostoevsky, John F. Desmond, Rene Girard, suicide, Walker Percy

Prophets for Our Age of Suicide

by Jessica Hooten Wilson|

Every age needs prophets—whether or not they heed their cautions—because prophets stand out of and often against the current.

December 14, 2018|Aleksandr Solzhenitysn, communism, Dante, Soviet Union, The Divine Comedy, The First Circle, Vladimir Solovyov

Solzhenitsyn’s Literary Ascent

by Jessica Hooten Wilson|

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Even a decade after his death, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn remains one of the most misinterpreted writers of the 20th century.

October 12, 2018|Alasdair MacIntyre, Aristotle, C.S. Lewis, Henry Fielding, James K.A. Smith, Karen Swallow Prior, reading, Shusaku Endo, virtues, Walker Percy

The Virtues of On Reading Well

by Jessica Hooten Wilson|

Bookstore in Montevideo, Uruguay, October 8, 2014 (Kseniya Ragozina/Adobe Stock Images).
As our poor usage of words attests, we do not know what “virtuous” means, let alone how to live it, but reading can help.

July 27, 2018|Aristotle, Edith Wharton, Elizabeth S. Amato, eudaimonia, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pursuit of Happiness and the American Regime, Tom Wolfe, Walker Percy

The Truth about Happiness

by Jessica Hooten Wilson|

Edith Wharton, circa 1901 (alamy.com)
The master storytellers have much to teach us about our natures and about what makes us happy.

June 15, 2018|Anthony Bourdain, anxiety, depression, Kate Spade, suicide, Walker Percy

Living as an Ex-Suicide

by Jessica Hooten Wilson|

Walker Percy in 1980 (Evelyn Hofer/Getty Images).
If we want to understand how someone who "has it all" could commit suicide, Walker Percy remains our best guide.

Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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Recent Posts

  • The Just Restraint of the Vicious

    For some contemporary criminal justice reformers, devotion to ideology leads to illogical conclusions about human nature and character change.
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  • Too Immature to be Punished?

    When I look back on my own life, I think I knew by the age of ten that one should not strangle old ladies in their beds.
    by Theodore Dalrymple

  • A Badge of Discrimination

    The British National Health Service has spoken: Wear the badge or declare yourself to be a bigot.
    by Theodore Dalrymple

  • A Judicial Takeover of Asylum Policy?

    Thuraissigiam threatens to make both the law and the facts in every petition for asylum—and there are thousands of them—a matter for the courts.
    by Thomas Ascik

  • The Environmental Uncertainty Principle

    By engaging in such flagrant projection, the Times has highlighted once again the problem with groupthink in the climate discussion.
    by Paul Schwennesen

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

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