The 15 Best Essays

Photo: the bloggods say that you need at least one photo per post, or people won’t click the shareable link. I assume this is doubly true if the word “essay” is in the title. Here’s some random photo last fall of me, living my best life now, incarnating the TGC aesthetic at a game of laser quest, disheveled, probably pretending not to be out of breath. 

Here are 15 essays that I consider the best.

1. “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell (1946)
2. “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace (2005)
3. “Friendship” by David Whyte (2015)
4. “The Last Enemy and the Final Victory: Singing the Blues with Jesus” by Michael Horton (2005)
5. “How to Be an Artist” by Jerry Saltz (2018)
6. “The Will to Believe” by William James (1896)
7. “How an Algorithm Feels from the Inside” by Eliezer Yudkowsky (2008)
8. “Anger” by David Whyte (2015)
9. “Discipleship Isn’t as Exciting as Youth Ministry Makes it Seem” by Timothy O’Malley (2018)
10. “Amateur Sociology Considered Harmful” by Ozymandias (2016)
11. “The Christ-like Gaze in Film” by Brett McCracken (2018)
12. “The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories” by Scott Alexander (2014)
13. “Shop Class as Soulcraft” by Matthew B. Crawford (2006)
14. “The Ethics of Elfland” by G.K. Chesterton (1908)
15. “Can We Compare?” in One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions by C.K. Rowe (2016)

UPDATE: I added links. Most are direct to the essays. 3, 8, and 15 are links to the books’ Amazon pages.

Honorable Mentions

• “Advice” by Neil Gaiman (2013). Not an essay but… it could be transcribed into one.
• “Crony Beliefs” by Kevin Simler (2016). I fell in love with an earlier version of this post. He has since revised it into something more specific. If I could get the text of the original, that would go on my list.
• “How Do You Make Life-Changing Decisions?” by Ryan Holiday (2012). Was very helpful for me in high school, but now I recommend Kevin DeYoung’s book Just Do Something to everyone.