In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien portrays his hobbit heroes toiling up a long, winding stairway that perhaps looks like early April’s rising curve of coronavirus cases and deaths. Sam Gamgee says he once thought adventures “were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for.” Sam realizes “that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind.” Frodo agrees: Those in a hard adventure never know “what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending.” 

I’ve given more than 300 speeches in more than 180 cities over the years, but since I’m turning 70 this year it’s time to retire from speechifying. I developed over time about 10 “stump speeches” on various subjects to be used with modifications in different places, and we plan to post a few of them on the first Saturday of the month as part of our Saturday Series. Here’s one, first delivered at Hillsdale College in 1996, about causes of the Revolutionary War.

Romans 8:28 says “all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” How could the effects of COVID-19 possibly be good? Many are dying. Many more face disruptions in their lives and careers, financial hardships, family stress, boredom … the list of difficulties goes on.

Oh, those good old days. R. R. Reno, editor of First Things, wrote this week, “More than one hundred years ago, Americans were struck by a terrible flu pandemic that affected the entire world. Their reaction was vastly different from ours. They continued to worship, go to musical performances, clash on football fields, and gather with friends.” 

Christopher Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement (Simon & Schuster, 2020) is a cranky book with lots of insights into how and why America has changed since the mid-20th century. Here are seven.

1. Why the 1960s feminist revolution? Caldwell notes that between 1920 and 1958, women went from one-third of college students to one-fourth. The GI Bill worked well for men, but “women were left stranded in empty houses full of high-powered cleaning machinery. This had never been their lot before.”

Jon Meacham, 50 years old, was managing editor and then editor of Newsweek from 1996 to 2010. He holds an endowed chair at Vanderbilt University and has received a Pulitzer Prize and eight honorary doctorates. His latest book is The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus From the Cross. Here are edited excerpts of our pre-Easter conversation.

Did you major in English at the University of the South (Sewanee) because you wanted to be a writer?

Since many of our readers love reading history books, we’ve had articles the past three Octobers about worthwhile ones. We’ll do that again this year—but amid coronavirus social isolation many of us are looking for good reading material. So here’s a spring set of history book recommendations.