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“The Declaration of Independence” by Bradley Birzer

June 17, 2026 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I was on a multi-day business trip to Washington, D.C. I had a free afternoon, so I walked from the hotel to the National Gallery on the Mall. And then, for reason or reasons unknown, I walked across the street to the National Archives. And there it was – the original Declaration of Independence.

Drafted mostly if not entirely by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is to America what the Magna Carta is to England. The statement of beliefs. The citation of grievances against an unjust ruler (also an English king, no less). The signatures.

As Bradley Birzer points out in The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty, the Declaration is all these things. And it is more. Like the Revolutionary War that was already underway, the Declaration was about ideas. One of the most radical ideas it contained was the rights come not from a king or a government, but naturally from a creator.

How the Declaration came about is a thrilling story, and Birzer tells it accurately and contextually without losing any of the thrill or drama. Straws in the wind began as early as the 1740s, and the British government’s determination to make the colonies pay, or help pay, for the French and Indian War began to accelerate momentum. By the 1770s, whether it was rebellion (as many British defined it) or liberation and freedom, the war of ideas was moving into a real war. And Birzer says that war started when the first colonist was killed at Lexington outside Boston.

*Edmund Burke in 1774, by Sir Joshua Reynolds*

Birzer also provides the lesser-known context. The colonies were already beginning the rupture well before the Declaration was signed in July 1776 in Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress. New Hampshire issued its own declaration, as did other colonies like Virginia. The tide was rising, and the British kept making one mistake after another in not recognizing the reality on the ground.

But not all the British. Edmund Burke, for one, championed the rights of the colonies in Parliament. Set against Burke in the war of ideas (if not Parliament) was Samuel Johnson, the author of the great dictionary, who was almost extreme in upholding the position of king and Parliament. Those debates, too, are concisely included by Birzer.

Birzer holds the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies and is a professor of history at Hillsdale College in Michigan. He received a B.A. degree from the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. degree from Indiana University. He serves on the boards of the Free Enterprise Institute and the Center for Cultural Renewal and is a fellow or scholar with the Foundation for Economic Education, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, The McDonnell Center, and the Center for Economic Personalism. His books include In Defense of Andrew Jackson, Russell Kirk: American Conservative, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Caroll, Neal Peart: Cultural (Re)Percussions, and Beyond Tenebrae: Christian Humanism in the Twilight of the West.

The Declaration of Independence is a well-researched, highly readable account of the seminal document in U.S. history. The Declaration is now 250 years old, still projecting its radical ideas about governments, people, and natural rights. It still is one of the most revolutionary documents written by man. And it remains as vital and current as it was when it emerged from Jefferson’s pen in 1776.

Related:

Beyond Tenebrae by Bradley Birzer.

Mythic Realms by Bradley Birzer.

“The Atlas of Independence” by Chris Mackowski

June 10, 2026 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

If I had a mental image of John Adams, it was of a rather dour individual who bridged the presidencies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, whom my history teachers in high school and college seemed to find much more interesting.

Then came the 2008 miniseries John Adams, with Paul Giamatti in the title role and Laura Linney as his wife Abigail. I almost skipped it, but we decided to watch it. And I began to understand that my teachers and I had all missed the boat on this major figure of the American Revolution. I sought out some biographies and histories, and I discovered my understanding of the second U.S. president was seriously misguided.

It was with that improving understanding that I began reading Atlas of Independence: John Adams and the American Revolution by Chris Mackowski. Now it all clicked. John Adams wasn’t some relatively minor character; he’d played a major role in the Second Continental Congress, the one that eventually adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Adams gave speeches. He argued. He cajoled. He chaired committees (he chaired a lot of committees). He wrote letters. And as Mackowski points out, he paid a steep price. As radical as Adams was in his politics, he was equally devoted to his wife Abigail and his family. And his work with the congress and later his appointment as part of the diplomatic mission to France kept his away from his family for long periods of time.

Atlas of Independence concisely tells the story of John Adams. It’s a highly readable, fascinating account, and it gives Adams the attention and understanding he merits. John Adams himself saw his cousin Sam Adams as the central figure of the American Revolution, but by the time of the Second Continental Congress, “John would begin to eclipse his cousin as the main engine driving the movement.”

John Adams, the main engine driving the movement to American independence. Yes, my understanding had been seriously flawed.

A professor at St. Bonaventure University, Mackowski has received B.A., M.A., M.F.A., and Ph.D. degrees in communication, English, and creative writing. The author of some nine books, he’s written extensively on the Civil War for a number of publications. He also worked for the National Park Service and gave tours of the Civil War battlefields at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania.

Atlas of Independence is well-researched, and it provides a solid summary of what Adams did to move the country toward independence and then declare it, as well as what he did to serve the cause of independence afterward.

Painting: John Adams, oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart.

The Strangest First Day on the Job I Ever Had

June 3, 2026 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

I felt more than a little apprehension. I was in morning rush hour traffic, driving to downtown St. Louis from the close-in suburb where I lived. It was something of a new experience. I hadn’t driven in rush-hour traffic since leaving Houston 25 years earlier. The apprehension wasn’t about traffic; I had stepped outside my career experience and accepted a job with St. Louis Public Schools. And I was early; the hours were 8 to 5, but I decided to be there by 7:30.

Except for nine months at a newspaper straight out of college, my career had been exclusively corporate communications: employee communications, crisis communications, media relations, environmental communications, and speechwriting. Especially speechwriting. Even for the three years I had had my own consulting business, I worked for companies, doing mostly speechwriting.

Corporations have their moments of craziness and crisis, but they pale in comparison to urban school districts. And yet, here I was, driving to my first day on the job at the largest school district in the state of Missouri, a district that had been in crisis for years and was now in hyper-crisis.

An outside management team has been authorized to take over and try to fix the massive problems the district faced – financial, academic, structural. The management team had been tasked with smashing an entrenched bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy – and all the outside people supporting it – was fighting back.

I was allowing myself to walk right into it. I’d already had the strangest job interview I’d ever had, and now I would have the strangest first day on the job I’d ever had.

*Photograph by Charles Deluvio via Unsplash*.

I parked in the district’s garage, a short walk across a plaza from the headquarters building. I followed my instructions, introduced myself to the security team at the entrance, and accompanied one of the armed guards to a small room off the lobby, where I had my picture taken and badge created. Then I took the stairs to the second floor, where my office was said to be. Someone directed me toward the side of the building overlooking North 11^th Street. The office was quite nice, just like any corporate office, and with a door. It was next to my boss’s office, but she was in an offsite meeting with all the other senior officials.

The secretary told me that I was supposed to go to Human Resources to fill out the required forms, but she said there was something else I needed to do first. Channel 5 News had asked for an interview about the teachers’ sickout.

“The teachers are having a sickout?” I said.

She nodded. “I think it has to do with changes to pensions. But they say it’s not a sickout, only hat a lot of teachers have called in sick.”

I went looking for someone to give me the background and find out what the district’s response was. I found the HR department down on the first floor, but no one there admitted to knowing anything. Someone in the academic department might know something, they said. I started looking around the building. That’s when I began to see some of the changes that had arrived.

The part of the second floor near my office was empty. There were fully equipped desks in cubicles, with tape dispensers, staplers, paper, and other office supplies, but no people. This had been the 12-member communication department. Now it was me and a half-headcount I hadn’t met yet. The people in Finance couldn’t help. No one in the academic department could say anything, because the top officials were in that offsite meeting.

The third and top floor was entirely empty except for a broadcast studio; the technician told me he was glad to meet me, his new boss. No one had mentioned that I was responsible for the broadcast studio. I would shortly learn that I was also responsible for the photography studio and archives, housed in one of the schools that had been closed. I found out that day when the district’s photographer showed up in my office to meet his new boss.

Back on the second floor, I stopped by the secretary’s desk to ask a question everyone had been vague about. What was my discretionary budget? She rather cheerfully told me that it it had been close to $1 million, but that had been reduced to $20,000. “But don’t worry about it,” she said. “The $20,000 has already been spent.”

The budget was zero. My job had become even more interesting.

I finally found someone who knew about the sick-leave policy and the issue, but they would not go on the record and never in front of a camera. I would soon learn that tended to be the official position of virtually everyone who worked for the school district – people universally saw the news media as one-way tickets to dismissal. The person did say the policy was that sickouts were illegal; people participating in them were subject to dismissal. I was warned that the principals would likely protect their staff and deny anyone had called in sick. I tested that with two principals. The assessment had been correct.

As my first hour on the job ended, I walked downstairs and outside to do an interview with Channel 5. Channels 2, 4, 11, and 30 followed. Then the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis American. The St. Louis Business Journal. The Riverfront Times. Several radio stations, including two independents.

That morning, I learned that I had to help TV reporters find a different location around the building so that televised reports wouldn’t look the same. That, as part of his job covering the school district, the Post-Dispatch reporter possessed and monitored a police radio. (The Post-Dispatch building was half a block away.) That School Board members, administrators, principals, and teachers all leaked like sieves to the media, parents, critics, protestors, and anyone else who’d listen.

*Photograph by Scott Graham via Unsplash*.

In between interviews, I received my first phone call. It was from the St. Louis Mayor’s office, providing my “suggested” instructions for the day. I would discover that this would happen three or four times a week. The Mayor’s office was not connected in any official way to the school district. I suppose it’s okay to note now that I received my instructions politely and then ignored them. But I appreciated the effort.

By noon, I had a little time to go to HR and fill out my forms. I completed them in a small conference room and returned them to a secretary. It would be weeks before anyone owned up to those forms getting lost. The people involved knew the forms had been lost, but they were afraid to say anything. I figured it out when I didn’t receive my first two paychecks.

More interviews followed. Lunch that day happened around 3 p.m. when I found a vending machine that I had to get Security to operate because there had been too many break-ins and thefts. Yes, right there in the headquarters building, presumably by people who worked there. What had been the district’s small cafeteria had been closed in one of the restructurings that had already happened.

Toward the end of the day, the secretary brought me a catalog to order office supplies. I mentioned that I’d seen the fully supplied cubicles nearby, and couldn’t I simply take some of what was there? She looked almost horrified. “But don’t you want new supplies?” she said. I said I would scavenge first, and if I needed anything else, I’d let her know. She looked at me like I was a graverobber.

By 5 p.m., I was exhausted. The administrators had all returned from the offsite meeting, and I was able to greet several of them, including the acting superintendent, the man who’d yelled at me in the interview. He had a small team of two or three people he’d brought with him; one of them would become an island of sanity in what was clearly the craziest workplace I’d ever walked into.

If I’d only known what was ahead, I might not have come back after what had been the stranngest, most hectic first day on the job I’d ever experienced.

Related:

The Strangest Job Interview I Ever Had.

Top photograph by St. Louis Public Schools.

The Strangest Job Interview I Ever Had

May 27, 2026 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

I was cleaning out some old files when I came across a small blue address book – the kind we used before iPhones had contact lists, or even before we had iPhones. It dates from 2003. When I looked at the listings, I realized I was holding an artifact of my career.

Between October of 2003 and May of 2004, I was Director of Communications for St. Louis Public Schools. The school district, with many of the problems of an urban school district, had been in upheaval since June. A reform board had been elected, and it had promptly hired an outside management firm from New York to design and implement a total overhaul. It wasn’t a simple reorganization; instead, think Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency without the charm.

On its first day, the outside firm discovered that the district wasn’t technically, but actually, bankrupt. Suddenly, change came. Schools were closed and consolidated. Hundreds of staff positions had been eliminated. Operations were outsourced. Chaos and protests were the watchwords. As in, daily chaos and protests.

I was distanced from all of it. I was working from home in a St. Louis suburb as a freelance consultant, having been one of many white males in their late 40s or early 50s who’d been downsized. I saw the newspaper stories, but they didn’t affect my kids, my school district, or my world.

But they soon would.

*Photograph by Nicola Tolin via Unsplash.*

By September, the chaos in St. Louis Public Schools had intensified. Layoffs were continuing. Board meetings had to be held in the largest school auditorium available, one that held 400. Another thousand would be outside, unable to get in. Arrests during board meetings were not uncommon.

That month, a friend called me. At least, I think he was a friend. He sent me a job posting – Director of Communications for St. Louis Public Schools. The former director had resigned, and the district was looking for a replacement. The previous position had managed a team of 12. The new position managed a team of one-half person, which provides some idea of how extensive the downsizing had been.

When I read the listing, I called the friend back. And I laughed. “You can’t be serious,” I said. But he was, explaining that the district desperately needed someone who could talk with opponents and protesters like they were real people and would be unflappable in the fact of hundreds screaming at you. He said I had that exact experience, reminding me of the time with a previous employer that I’d had corporate security keeping my house under surveillance because of threats from people associated with a Greenpeace protest.

We talked some more. I said I’d think about it. I did. And then I did something that most people would consider stupid. I filled out the application and sent it in. I had zero experience with working for a school district.

And heard nothing. For weeks.

I’d almost forgotten about it when a district secretary called and told me the interview was set for a day the following week at 9 a.m. I was to park in the district’s headquarters parking building and give my name to the security officers at the entrance.

And thus began the strangest job interview I have ever had.

But before the interview, another friend called and asked a strange question. Was I applying for a job in the St. Louis mayor’s office? When I said no, but I had applied for the school district job, he simply said, “Ah.” He told me that a consultant to the mayor had been calling around and connected to him, looking for background on me. The weirdest thing he’d been asked was if I attended church, and if so, which one. He happened to know, and he provided the information.

The mayor’s office was closely, if unofficially, tied to what was happening in the school district.

The interview day arrived. I drove to downtown St. Louis and parked. I gave my name to the security officer. I was escorted to a conference room to wait. With nine other candidates for the job.

Ten of us. Not only was I the only white male in the room, but I was also the only male. I was wearing a suit. I smiled and told the others hello. No one spoke. They stared at me like I was a triceratops that had accidentally wandered in from the street.

One by one, we were called to the interview in another nearby conference room. The intervals between each varied, from five minutes to 25. You could almost guess who was getting the most favorable reactions by the length of time that passed.

I was the last to be called.

Waiting in the conference room were the lead for the management team, who was serving as acting superintendent; one of the team associates; and a vice president who was the theoretical manager for the communications function. She would be my boss, if I got the job.

For about 10 minutes, the interview questions were perfunctory. Tell us about yourself. What would you consider your greatest achievement. Your biggest failure. Your background. A couple of questions about specific things on my resume.

I could tell the acting superintendent was getting antsy. He was seated to my left, and the other two interviewers were next to each other on my right. He was fidgeting, almost like someone who couldn’t keep still (my oldest son was like that; I recognized the behavior). Suddenly, he cut off a question from across the table, stood, and almost exploded as he shouted.

“Why the hell would you want a job like this?”

The room went silent. The other two looked down, as if this was and wasn’t a surprise.

For a moment, I said nothing. And then I said, “Because you need me.”

Whatever he expected me to say, that wasn’t it. He looked surprised and then sat down. I went on to explain that the protests were unlikely to stop, and the district needed someone who could deal with that. They needed someone who was comfortable in front of a news camera. They needed someone who understood internal as well as external communications. And they needed someone who would treat critics and protesters with respect and empathy.

They listened, asked a few more questions, and the interview ended. I drove the 16 miles home, finding my wife waiting in the driveway. A member of the school board and former St. Louis mayor had called, and I was supposed to meet him at his office now. I turned around and headed back toward mid-town St. Louis.

The office was in a building near the St. Louis Symphony; I parked in the symphony’s parking lot and made my way to the top floor of the building next door. It was lunchtime, and the offices and desks were empty. I could hear a voice down the hall and followed the sound.

The man was on the phone and waved me into the office. He handed me a binder, indicating that I should start reading it. It was a report on the problems in the school district, and it was about two inches thick. When he finished his call, he turned to me and said, “Tomorrow, I need you with me at a meeting with a group of teachers from the high school. It’s at 4 p.m., and about a dozen people will be there.” The meeting would be at an Italian restaurant in the part of St. Louis known as the Hill, still a largely Italian American area (Joe Garigiola and Yogi Berra grew up there). He continued talking while I wondered whether the teachers’ meeting was part of the interview process.

As he talked, I began to realize that this wasn’t an interview; I was getting my first assignment. I finally asked, “I’m assuming I’m hired?”

He waved almost impatiently. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll work out the other stuff like salary. Just be there at 4.” And with that, the conversation was over.

And that is how I was hired as Director of Communication for St. Louis Public Schools. I didn’t know the official start date, my salary, benefits, or anything else. But I was hired.

Top photograph by Chelaxy Designs via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“To Those Who Speak” by Adam Luke Hawker

May 20, 2026 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Luke Adam Hawker is a designer who made the leap to full-time art in 2015. His background is architecture and design, and in his art, he works to connect places and people. His limited-edition prints can be found at several locations in London, including the Royal Opera House, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Old Royal Naval College, and Battersea Power Station.

Hawker has also published three books. Together (2021) is a graphic novel that turned into a surprise bestseller. The Last Tree: A Seed of Hope (2023) is a fable about a world without trees. This year, he published To Those Who Speak, a much more personal story that’s less a story and more of a non-fictional account with quiet, profound illustrations.

The story is this, simply: Hawker and his wife had a son born with an extra X chromosome. The boy is also non-verbal. Hawker did what most parents would do – researched, read, and try to understand how he could teach his son to understand and communicate. The family had or bought a dog, and the dog attached itself to the boy. The dog and the boy seemed to understand each other without a word being exchanged.

At some point, Hawker understood. Perhaps it wasn’t that the non-verbal boy could learn to understand words. Instead, perhaps the verbal parent could learn how to communicate to the non-verbal boy. And that’s what happened. One thing that resulted was this book, To Those Who Speak.

As Hawker says in his introduction, it is not a children’s book, but it is also not not a children’s book. Using black-and-white drawings and minimal words, the book is “an expression of gratitude” to his son for what Hawker calls an Invaluable education.

Emotion wells as you read and absorb the drawings. The boy meets the dog. They become each other’s world. The boy begins to hum. He and the dog discover the peace of wandering among trees. Hawker begins to see how much his son can say without uttering a word. The boy’s development is measured by steps, not milestones. The first unspoken but hand-shaped word. A respiratory illness (not uncommon among children with the extra X chromosome), an illness that was nearly fatal.

You don’t need many words to describe this beautiful book. You just nod and sit with it.

When You Hit a Writing Drought

May 13, 2026 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Since the time I was a reporter for my college newspaper, longer ago than I care to admit, writing has been an integral part of my life. I’ve been a reporter, editor, newsletter editor, speechwriter, public relations manager, novelist, short story writer, non-fiction book author, blogger, book reviewer, essayist, poet, and more. Writing has been central in every job I held and every employer I worked for.

I never had time for writer’s block. A speech had to be written. News releases had deadlines. Contracts had to be met. Employers had expectations (or demands, often unreasonable). I might have a project where I had to pause to understand the challenge fully, but I’d figure out a way through it.

What I’ve had for the last year isn’t writer’s block. I still blog, write book reviews, and even write a few short stories. But the flood of writing that’s carried me for 50-plus years has slowed considerably. It’s less of a block and more of a “moderate drought.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Photograph by Glenn Carstens-Peters via Unsplash. Used with permission.

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