My four-legged companion, Guapo, gazes at the passing countryside with a contented expression. I, on the other hand, am caught up in complicated rumination...

It’s 7 AM. The tent is folded, the cooler packed, and I’m gassing up at a filling station in Doe Run, Missouri. Yesterday, Guapo and I logged over seven hundred miles on our Midwestern road trip...

It’s after midnight and near freezing. My buddy, Carter, and I stand still and peer into the canyon. It has sharp shadows. The moon lights up the flat surfaces of rock. The coyotes start yelping and there is a gentle rumble behind us...

When a teenager attends a religious retreat, a moment arrives when he or she is handed a folder stuffed with letters. These letters of support, written by parents, teachers, coaches and friends, express the love and admiration we often fail to articulate in day-to-day life...

Gian Sardar wrote a book about her father who grew up in Kurdistan. “I saw my father as a boy in fields of blood-red poppies,” she said in an interview. “I imagined the mud huts he lived in, the sound of the call to prayer early in the morning and the howl of the planes that brought destruction to the land..."

The courtroom was packed. Lawyers, reporters, county commissioners and law enforcement officials crammed into the benches next to ex-offenders, recovering addicts, clergy...

In high school, books by John Steinbeck were assigned reading: The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl and The Red Pony. I loved those books. Now that I’m getting ready to retire, it’s time to read Travels with Charley: In Search of America...

The Road, a film based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, unfolds in a devastated world where every city lies in ruins, animals no longer exist, all plant life is destroyed and bands of cannibals roam the country. At the center of the story, a father and young son journey toward the ocean...

The kid slouches over a plate of stew, eyes glued to a phone, a storm of red hair billows beneath his cap. I unfold my napkin and glance at his dad. “Zeke,” he says. “Put the phone away.”