Good morning. First up, D. G. Hart reviews two new books on Trump and evangelicals: “As much as moralism has afflicted religious politics in the United States, evangelicals suffer from a strain of prissiness that outdistances most other believers who make America their home. Recent books by John Fea and Peter Wehner display this evangelical idealism. They are remarkably useful for understanding how broad swaths of American Protestants assess not simply the presidency of Donald Trump but the history and character of the United States. Both authors are laymen in evangelical churches and have no professional standing as church officials. But both writers are also experts in professions that encourage members to make judgments about American politics and society. Fea teaches U.S. history at Messiah College, an evangelical liberal arts school in central Pennsylvania, and Wehner has been a staffer in three Republican presidential administrations and is now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. These credentials distinguish Fea and Wehner from the ordinary evangelical in the pew. At the same time, both authors vehemently critique President Trump and the evangelicals who voted for him on grounds that rely little on the expertise that comes with historical inquiry or political experience. Instead, they rely on the moralistic squint that born-again Protestants have made a trademark of Christian devotion.”

Sad news out of Cambridge, England: George Steiner has died. He was 90.

Sam Leith writes about falling in love with Nancy Drew mysteries: “My grandfather got into the habit, for a bit, of buying me one a week. Whenever I had a book token, it was into the bookshop at the top of the main street (I can’t for the life of me remember its name) that I would go. Oh! the anticipation of a fresh one, a fresh mystery, smelling of new paperback, picked off the long shelf of Nancy Drew books in the children’s section and taken home in a crisp paper bag.”

It’s not every day that you come across not one but two interesting pieces on Bigfoot. Tom Jokinen writes about searching for unseen things in The Literary Review of Canada: “On all three coasts of Canada, and places in between, there are sites of mystery, where things live but are not seen, where things exist as rumour. This just adds to their power: the fairies of Newfoundland, the Manipogo of Lake Manitoba, the sasquatch of the West Coast. In Toronto, the only comparable myth is the 29 Dufferin bus, whispered about but never seen. Mostly, though, the tales of cryptids belong to the deep wilds and waters, and they are persistent. Sasquatch has been a star since 1967, when the famous Patterson-Gimlin film purportedly captured what came to be known as Bigfoot, in Northern California. The creature looks at the camera. Is it real? Or a man in an ape suit? The grainy footage is a moving Rorschach test: the figure is what you want it to be.”

In The New Atlantis, Clare Coffey reviews Linda Godfrey’s I Know What I Saw: Modern-Day Encounters With Monsters of New Urban Legend and Ancient Lore. The book is “something between a bestiary, a campfire tale collection, and a cryptozoology field report. It is a haphazard survey of extant American monster legends in the tradition of William T. Cox’s 1910 book Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods. But where Fearsome Creatures is a work of imaginative extravagance and linguistic invention (the Tote-Road Shagamaw is my personal favorite), I Know What I Saw grounds an investigative bent in first-person accounts. Most of the loosely organized sections deal with a broad monster genus — werewolves, mystery cats, Bigfoot, little people — or a more specific local apparition, like the goat-man of Roswell, New Mexico.”

A short history of the StairMaster: “Among viral Peloton memes and ClassPass fundraising clamor, the StairMaster remains a quiet presence in most gyms. The machine, which features an infinite loop of stairs and demands a notoriously tough cardio workout, is as common as a treadmill or a stationary bike. But the StairMaster’s ubiquity belies a colorful history that skyrocketed it to fame during the 1980s.”

Samanth Subramanian writes about his addiction to quiz competitions: “I’m entering my fourth decade of addiction. In my quizzing, there is to be found a story of my life. It is the single constant to which I’ve clung as I bounced between schools, universities, jobs and cities. In India, where I grew up, my obsession began with inter-school quizzes: teams of two or three, sitting behind desks, fielding questions in turn. When I was eight, I took part in my first, in Delhi. We missed out on winning on a tie-breaker, and for a week afterwards, I replayed that moment in my mind so vividly that I found it hard to fall asleep at night. In 1999, when I went to an American university to study journalism, I discovered Quiz Bowl tournaments, for which we practised once a week, dividing up into teams and holding mock-contests in empty classrooms late into the night. I returned to India and, while working as a reporter, sank into the circuit of “open” quizzes, so-called because anyone is free to form a team and take part. Three years ago, after my wife and I moved for a brief stint to Ireland, I joined the Dublin Quiz League, conducted in pubs but otherwise a serious affair with difficult questions. Everywhere I have lived, I have attempted the World Quizzing Championship – an exam-like solo affair held all over the world on a particular June day . . . Whatever I’m doing at any point of the day, it is probably safe to assume that I would rather be quizzing.”

As I noted a few weeks ago, Cascade Books has published a collection of my essays and reviews on poets and poetry. I have some availability to give talks—about poetry or something else, like writing or art and politics. Send me an email at micah[dot]mattix[at]gmail[dot]com if you want more information.

Essay of the Day:

In Spiked, Michael Crowley tells the story of Australia’s original colonists. He argues it is one of “honor, courage and stubborn curiosity”:

“Eleven ships set sail from Plymouth in May 1787, carrying around 1,400 people, including convicts, marines, officers and seaman, on an eight-month, 15,000-mile journey. The voyage is an incredible story in itself. Never before had so many people been moved so far on the face of the Earth. None of the leading officers had sailed the Southern Ocean before, and only the flagship Sirius carried Larcum Kendall’s K1 clock for measuring longitude. That all eleven ships arrived at Botany Bay within a few days of each other with barely any loss of life is a historic feat of seamanship and navigation.

“Little is known about the crews but that they were international in make-up. Sailors from France, America, the Caribbean, Madagascar and many Cornish may well have been handpicked or pressed. Phillip and several offices went ashore at Botany Bay, carried out of a longboat up the beach by convict James Ruse to parley with the Aboriginal people. The Fleet spent two weeks at Botany Bay before Phillip decided it was unsuitable for settlement. They investigated to the north and entered the harbour described by Surgeon John White as ‘without exception, the finest harbour in the universe’. Phillip’s initial plan was to call the settlement New Albion, but as the precariousness of their situation dawned on him, he decided to name the location after the then home secretary Lord Sydney, believing he would not let a settlement named after him perish. Before the convicts had set foot on their wilderness jail, Phillip and a few officers raised the union flag on the beach, drank to the health of King George III and formally took possession of New South Wales. There was a volley of musket fire from marines. And that symbolic rather than dramatic episode is the origin of Australia Day.

“But it was to be on 7 February that the newly anointed governor Arthur Phillip set out his stall. Drums and pipes were played, the convicts were made to sit on the beach circled by soldiers and marines, and before them were the leading officers. Phillip read out his instructions from London. There would be a court established, all executions would require his consent. Phillip was very specific about the treatment of indigenous people. As George Worgan, a naval surgeon, recorded in his memoir: ‘The Governor gave strict orders that the natives should not be offended or molested on any account… they were to be treated with friendship.’

“Philip told the convict men that ‘if they attempted to get into the women’s tent of a night, they would be shot upon’. Everyone would work to make the colony work. Convicts ‘would never be worked beyond their abilities, but every individual should contribute… [S]tealing the most trifling article of stock or provisions should be punished by death.’ Food rations were to be the same for marine and convict alike.”

Read the rest.

Photos: Hawaii

Receive Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here.