When I was a boy, I would occasionally wander down to the basement of our house, where more often than not my father would be typing furiously on one of those lovely, sleek IBM Selectric typewriters of yore. His concentration and dedication as a writer were mesmerizing. When I was perhaps 13 or 14 he proposed that I spend the summer writing a series of essays on a variety of topics. At that moment, of course, I thought he was just plain nuts, if not a little sadistic. But that challenge struck something deep within me. I can’t even remember if I wrote anything that summer, but I suspected that he sensed something, that there might be a writer inside me as well.

Not long after that, I became a contributor to my junior high literary magazine, printed on mimeograph paper with purple ink that smelled both toxic and intoxicating. I’ve been writing ever since, on a variety of topics: art, literature, politics, theology, and beyond. I’ve written a biography, a monograph on an artist, a host of essays and book reviews, and several books on “parenting” (for lack of a better word).

Currently I’m researching a book about the Renaissance Christian Humanist, Desiderius Erasmus. The working title of the book (which won’t see the light of day for years) is: The Company of Good Letters: How Erasmus and His Circle of Renaissance Christian Humanists Shaped the Modern World.

In the meantime, a collection of my essays entitled Beauty Will Save the World will be published in June 2011. And I will soon begin work on a second collection of my editorial statements from Image.