Alan Jacobs

Photo by Holly Fish

Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. A prolific essayist, reviewer, and blogger, he is the author of Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis, “The Book of Common Prayer”: A Biography, and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, among others. Jacobs was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He’s been married for forty-two years and has a grown-up son. He is an Anglican Christian.

Click here to see a list of books by Alan Jacobs

Links to posts and programs featuring Alan Jacobs:

  • The Public Poetry of W. H. Auden — Alan Jacobs explains why W. H. Auden returned to the Church after recognizing that liberal humanism had no answers to the problem of human evil. (58 minutes)
  • The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis — Interviews about Lewis with Clyde Kilby, Michael Aeschliman, James Como, Bruce L. Edwards, Thomas Howard, and Gilbert Meilaender. Plus a reading by Alan Jacobs. (73 minutes)
  • Stronger than death — Alan Jacobs and Mark Shea defend the portrayal of magic in the Harry Potter books.
  • Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy — Critic Alan Jacobs summarizes the theological and moral vision that Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy broadcasts — a vision that unfolds through his dark retelling of the Genesis story. (18 minutes)
  • On faithful fiction: Larry Woiwode, Alan Jacobs, & Jay Tolson — This Friday Feature represents three interviews on fiction from Volume 3: Larry Woiwode on what makes good fiction, Alan Jacobs on P. D. James’s The Children of Men, and Jay Tolson on Walker Percy. (29 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 93 — FEATURED GUESTS: Alan Jacobs, James A. Herrick, Robert C. Roberts, J. Daryl Charles, Allan C. Carlson, and Sheila O’Connor-Ambrose
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 77 — FEATURED GUESTS: Eric Miller, Lisa de Boer, Peter J. Schakel, and Alan Jacobs
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 48 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jon Butler, Gary Cross, Zygmunt Bauman, Pico Iyer, Richard Stivers, Larry Woiwode, Alan Jacobs, and James Trott
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 40 — FEATURED GUESTS: Joseph Epstein, John Gray, Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr., William T. Pizzi, Pamela Walker Laird, Albert Borgmann, Neal Stephenson, and Alan Jacobs
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 153 — FEATURED GUESTS: Charles C. Camosy, O. Carter Snead, Matt Feeney, Margarita A. Mooney, Louis Markos, and Alan Jacobs
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 142 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, Jeffrey Bishop, Alan Jacobs, D. C. Schindler, and Marianne Wright
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 121 — FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel Gabelman, Curtis White, Michael Hanby, Alan Jacobs, James K. A. Smith, Bruce Herman, and Walter Hansen
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 110 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kevin Belmonte, David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet, Mark Noll, Alan Jacobs, and Jonathan Chaplin
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 105 — FEATURED GUESTS: Julian Young, Perry L. Glanzer, Kendra Creasy Dean, Brian Brock, Nicholas Carr, and Alan Jacobs
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 100 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jennifer Burns, Christian Smith, Dallas Willard, Peter Kreeft, P. D. James, James Davison Hunter, Paul McHugh, Ted Prescott, Ed Knippers, Martha Bayles, Dominic Aquila, Gilbert Meilaender, Neil Postman, and Alan Jacobs
  • Immersion in a different time —
    FROM VOL. 17
    Literary critic Alan Jacobs considers the author Patrick O’Brian as perhaps the best historical novelist ever. (13 minutes)
  • Faulkner’s tragic vision — Alan Jacobs describes how William Faulkner’s fiction explored the tragedy of living with a legacy of evil acts. (26 minutes)
  • Decadent Immortals — What do Ann Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles have to say about human nature? Critic Alan Jacobs illuminates the deeper moral questions raised by Rice’s first novel, which she seems to abandon as the series evolves. (51 minutes)
  • Deadly Legacy: Alan Jacobs on Original Sin — Alan Jacobs discusses his book, Original Sin: A Cultural History, (2008) a survey of how beliefs about sin have affected literature, politics, music, education, and other spheres of human culture. (60 minutes)
  • Christina Rossetti and George MacDonald revisited — Alan Jacobs talks about the theme of renunciation in Christina Rossetti’s poems, and Stephen Prickett looks at aspects of nineteenth-century Romanticism from which George MacDonald’s work emerges. (33 minutes)
  • C. S. Lewis on communities of thought — Alan Jacobs talks about C. S. Lewis’s two essays, “The Inner Ring” and “Membership” and how they explore the fact that all of our thinking is situated within relationships. (19 minutes)
  • Bridges with structural flaws —
    FROM VOL. 4
    What made The Bridges of Madison County so popular, and so flawed? Alan Jacobs offers some insights. (14 minutes)
  • Alan Jacobs on The Narnian — Alan Jacobs discusses C. S. Lewis’s view of the imagination and his deep conviction that the shaping of the conscience requires the training of the imagination. (53 minutes)
  • After irony — Richard Rorty’s tangled spiritual pilgrimage has origins in being the grandson of social gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch and the son of committed Leninists.
  • A regard for the whole person —
    FROM VOL. 16
    Alan Jacobs discusses the clinical stories of neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose ability to bring out the dignity and personhood of his “characters” (patients) rivals that of many novelists. (11 minutes)