About Dean Abbott

Dean Abbott is a writer living in the American Midwest. He is the author of many essays about cultural topics and personal virtue. His website is The Quieter Life.

Self-Denial in an Age of Distraction

By |2019-06-07T21:16:36-05:00June 7th, 2019|Categories: Culture, Modernity, Science, Technology|

We wonder whether smartphones have somehow fundamentally altered our human nature, but ask why we were so vulnerable to addiction when they arrived on the scene. Technology amplifies, but does not alter, who we are. We are creatures with a deep and abiding desire to avoid the real. We seek to escape awareness of ourselves [...]

The Glorious Inefficiency of Local Bookstores

By |2019-06-17T15:43:00-05:00October 21st, 2018|Categories: Books, Bookstore, Christianity, Community, Culture, Timeless Essays|

Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Dean Abbott as he considers the importance of the small, local bookstore to civilization. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher Our family lives in the kind of town most people only see in fiction: an archetypal, small, Midwestern town of picket fences and blocks [...]

The Glorious Inefficiency of Local Bookstores

By |2018-07-02T23:34:06-05:00November 16th, 2017|Categories: Books, Christianity, Community, Culture, Featured, Technology|

The point of going to the bookstore is to experience its glorious inefficiency, its Romantic signaling of something transcendent, its countercultural cultivation of quietude and dignity… Our family lives in the kind of town most people only see in fiction: an archetypal, small, Midwestern town of picket fences and blocks of mostly modest bungalows. Homes [...]

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