A good column does something strange — it takes a whole tangled issue and gets you to the point in three minutes flat. Politics, society, religion, whatever’s actually happening right now — someone’s already broken it down so you don’t have to sit and figure it out from scratch. That’s the craft of it, really: saying a lot without saying too much. Manshurat’s collection pulls together columns across a range of topics, worth reading for what they say and how they say it. Students especially seem to get a lot out of these, along with anyone who just wants something substantial without committing an afternoon to it. Full archive at Manshurat