Featured

Let the Body Testify
When society pressures women to alter their bodies to meet others’ expectations, who pays the price?
Leah Libresco Sargeant
Essay
The Abyss of Beauty
Why do we shy from paying attention to nature’s beauty?
Ian Marcus Corbin
Essay
Ernest Becker and Our Fear of Death
One by one, Becker shoots down various ways humans alleviate their dilemma as too paltry, too cowardly, too self-destructive.
Kelsey Osgood
Essay
Into the Sussex Weald
In my corner of England, the labors of people long dead live on in the landscape.
Adam Nicolson
Essay
More Fish Than Sauce
Beneath Panama City’s gleaming skyscrapers, traditional fishermen still venture out to sea for a hard-won catch.
Iván Bernal Marín
Dispatch

From the Editor

The Book of the Creatures
In which Plough’s editor quotes Monty Python and Maximus the Confessor,
Peter Mommsen
From the Editor

Insights

Return to Idaho
When I went back to Idaho, I connected with more than just the land.
Gracy Olmstead
Personal History
The Lords of Nature
New medical ­technologies promise to let us mold our bodies at will. Should we use them?
Edmund Waldstein
Essay
Midwestern Logistical Small Talk
If only a returned soldier’s relation to society didn’t need to be renegotiated with each conversation.
Phil Klay
Forum
Singing God’s Glory with Keith Green
Keith Green’s singing opened my eyes to the truth of God’s creation and our place in it.
Randall Gauger
Reading
The Glory of the Creatures
Revisit each of the seven days of creation with Augustine, Francis, Job, Pascal, Mechthild, and others.
Reading
Why Children Need Nature
The inventor of kindergarten says we can’t drive children like sheep, nor lead them like soldiers.
Friedrich Froebel
Reading
Made in the Image of God
What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Humans are called to something higher than being an animal.
J Heinrich Arnold
Reading

Web Exclusives

The Elemental Strangeness of Foxes
In pursuit of London’s wildlife.
Zito Madu
Love in the Marketplace
What’s for sale on online dating sites?
Mary Harrington
Astronomy According to Dante
Plough interviews astronomer Sperello di Serego Alighieri.
Saints and Beasts
Could the unlikely story about Saint Gerasimos and Jordanes the Lion be true?

Arts & Letters

Poem: “The Path”
It’s not a path that takes you very far. / It only brings you back to where you are.
Alfred Nicol
Poetry
Poem: “The Berkshires”
An older mountain’s easier to climb. / What once were jagged peaks are rolling hills, / more welcoming this way, if less sublime.
Alfred Nicol
Poetry
The Secret Life of Birds
A globetrotting bird photographer stalks the elusive mulga parrot and other feathered marvels.
Portfolio
Editors’ Picks: The Opening of the American Mind
Brandon McGinley reviews The Opening of the American Mind: Ten Years of The Point.
Brandon McGinley
Reviews
Editors’ Picks: Klara and the Sun
Joy Clarkson reviews Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.
Joy Marie Clarkson
Reviews
Writing in the Sand
You can become complacent in faith – and also in doubt. But God is in the world, just as poetry is in a poem.
Christian Wiman
Essay