Sublime

I’m a sucker for Puritan New England and the Civil War. Because those two subjects feature the central tension of American life, the conflict between freedom and community, between individual will and the public good.

American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets.

Church and state were separate but cozy.

The nice thing about Philadelphia is that no one has moved there to find the good life for over two hundred years.