Ed Simon

Ed Simon is Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University, the editor of the Pittsburgh Review of Books, staff writer at LitHub, and the author of several books, including Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, named a “Best Book of 2024” by The New Yorker.

Articles

Religion Dispatches

With Demons Held Responsible These Days for Everything from Covid to LGBTQ Rights, Take a Visual Tour of the History of Demonization

During our season of political madness , it took a lot to trigger a double-take, and yet a pro-Trump, Covid-denialist pediatrician named Stella Immanuel declaring that illness was caused by the semen…

Ed Simon

April 5, 2022

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Religion Dispatches

Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel

Willa Cather is so associated with the Nebraska prairie’s expanse, depicted in novels like O Pioneers! and My Ántonia, that it’s disorienting to imagine her living in hilly industrial Pittsburgh at…

Ed Simon

September 30, 2021

Article

Religion Dispatches

History Matters: On the 400th Anniversary of Plymouth We're Still Clinging to Destructive National Myths

Within William Bradford’s massive work, Of Plymouth Plantation, composed between 1630 and 1651 while he was occasional governor of the colony, there’s no mention of the eponymous rock upon which the…

Ed Simon

December 16, 2020

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