Chronicles crackles with goodness and excitement, and I hope that one of these days I can send it something worth including either in the magazine or in the Chronicles Extra! section of your website. I was introduced to Chronicles thanks to the “critique” the Weekly Standard gave it back in 1996, right after Pat Buchanan’s early success in New Hampshire (as an example of “the way those paleos think”). It’s been a remarkable experience coming to terms with the ideas and truths expressed in Chronicles and even just adjusting to its overall style and format. It has been a splendid “nonacademic” education (meaning, of course, one that is genuine) to supplement the very academic one I’ve been receiving as a graduate student at Columbia (though I’m glad to report that the study of Russian literature has remained remarkably immune to the poisons seeping in from other departments and disciplines). As a matter of fact, if and when that time comes, I think I’ll give my son as a graduation gift CDs of all of Bach’s cantatas, a complete Thackeray, and a four-year subscription to Chronicles!

        —John Freitag Isham
New York, NY