Whether she's writing fragmented fiction (read Gilead!) or incisive essays, Marilynne Robinson's sentences hit with the weight of a proverb. Plain descriptions of everyday objects read as visions from an oracle. And even though I'm so bored with writers who continue to "search for mystery" in traditional religious texts, I can never get bored of Robinson's writing. In her new book of essays, she looks at our current political moment through Ralph Waldo Emerson's transcendentalist lens and Alexis de Tocqueville's critiques of democracy, and offers a prescription for many of our social ills. by Stranger Editor Rich Smith