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Voices
Nathan Beacom writes from Fremont, Neb. His writing has previously appeared in The Public Discourse and The Des Moines Register.
Arts & CultureBooks
Nathan Beacom
David McPherson's new book on the importance of placing limitations on our ambitions and desires touches on existential, political, moral and economic questions.
Arts & CultureBooks
Nathan Beacom
In her new book, Uprooted, Grace Olmstead investigates the social and personal costs of shopping for a place to live the way we shop for cars.
Anita's Tortilleria, a restaurant and gas station on the south side of Fremont, Neb., is one sign of the growing diversity in many American small towns. (Nathan Beacom)
Politics & SocietyShort Take
Nathan Beacom
As rural America becomes more diverse, it faces many of the problems associated with big cities, writes Nathan Beacom. The urban-rural divide in our politics does not reflect reality.
In the Ohio and Upper Mississippi river basins, 10 million metric tons of commercial fertilizer is applied each year, and much of it ends up in our waterways. (iStock/filmfoto)
Politics & SocietyShort Take
Nathan Beacom
In “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis called drinkable water a human right. But as Nathan Beacom writes, our methods of farming and raising livestock are degrading our soil and polluting our waterways.
(iStock/fstop123)
Politics & SocietyShort Take
Nathan Beacom
The current opioid crisis has strong parallels to drug addiction in Victorian England, writes Nathan Beacom, and the struggles of the Catholic poet Francis Thompson.
The site of Clemens Field baseball stadium in Hannibal, Mo., near the Mississippi River, on May 31.  (Jake Shane/Quincy Herald-Whig via AP)
Politics & SocietyShort Take
Nathan Beacom
This spring’s floods devastated farming and rural communities in the middle of the U.S. that were already struggling with economic and social decline, writes Nathan Beacom. But ”blue” America may find it difficult to sympathize.
(iStock/JamesBrey)
Politics & SocietyShort Take
Nathan Beacom
The latest five-year farm bill continues a pattern of subsidizing corporations while squeezing every last drop of use out of farm families and cropland.
The Indian Creek area of Bears Ears National Monument (iStock/Adventure_Photo)
Politics & SocietyShort Take
Nathan Beacom
Preserving wilderness areas is a way to preserve the idea of the sacred. But the Trump administration is seeking a huge reduction in protected land.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
Nathan Beacom
All those who eat are called to care about the plight of those whose work produced the eating.