Casey N. Cep

Maryland

Staff Writer at The New Yorker

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Articles

What We’re Reading This Summer: Mega-Reads

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Casey N. Cep |Jia Tolentino |Julian Lucas |Margaret Talbot

Summer is here, and with it summer reading. Every week, the New Yorker’s editors and critics select the best new books we’ve read in 2025 so far. This year, we’ve also asked the magazine’s writers to suggest favorite mega-reads—sizable, sprawling novels, biographies, and works of history that will keep you absorbed and entertained until the end of the season. Their selections are below. “He had to go fast, like an American, or he was all torpor.
Dolly Parton’s Quietly Inspiring Defense of Marriage

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Casey N. Cep

Abelard and Heloise, Vladimir and Véra, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria: to these historic his and hers, I would add Carl and Dolly. That’s Dean and Parton, the Tennessee couple whose nearly sixty-year marriage ended in March, when Dean died, at the age of eighty-two. The country-music star released a statement announcing her husband’s death (twenty-eight words) and then a song celebrating his life (three minutes and twenty-eight seconds).
The “Lady Preacher” Who Became World-Famous-and Then Vanished

2 months ago | ourcommunitynow.com | Casey N. Cep

Share Aimee Semple McPherson was barefoot when she left Room 202 at the Ocean View Hotel.
The “Lady Preacher” Who Became World-Famous-and Then Vanished

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Casey N. Cep

Aimee Semple McPherson was barefoot when she left Room 202 at the Ocean View Hotel. Wearing only a bathing suit, a dressing gown, and a swim cap, McPherson—the founder of one of America’s first megachurches and just about the most famous woman in the country—had a street waffle for lunch, then settled in the shade of an umbrella just north of Venice Beach to work on a sermon.
The Unstoppable Rise of the State Symbol

Dec 28, 2024 | newyorker.com | Casey N. Cep

These sorts of ceremonial designations began more than a century ago, as an attempt, ironically, to identify what’s distinctive about each state. Every state has a flag, of course, and also a motto. My home state, Maryland, manages to have the best of the former (despite the occasional cringing by tasteless outsiders) and the worst of the latter (“fatti maschii, parole femine,” or “manly deeds, womanly words”).
Callum Robinson’s “Ingrained,” Reviewed: A Carpenter’s Memoir

Dec 2, 2024 | newyorker.com | Casey N. Cep

What do people do all day? My daughter loves to read Richard Scarry’s book of that title, though she generally skips ahead to the hospital pages. Once we’ve read about Doctor Lion, Doctor Dog, and Nurse Nelly four or five times, she’s ready to go back to the beginning.
A Grandson’s Urgent Chronicle of Family Life in Small-Town Ohio

Nov 12, 2024 | newyorker.com | Casey N. Cep

Some of McNally’s rituals are legible in the pictures of him in “New Paris.” When Schell jokes that his grandfather has a healthy routine of waking up to smoke and drink at home and then waiting for the hour of the day when he can smoke and drink at the American Legion, we can see the geography of his addictions and distractions. But other rituals are more hidden.
The Megachurch That Tried to Confront Racism

Oct 23, 2024 | ourcommunitynow.com | Casey N. Cep

ShareWhen it comes to Christianity, scale often matters: the larger the data set, the worse the outlook on any number of axes, from membership to charitable giving, while the more anecdotal the account, the better things seem. Take Hahrie Han’s new book, “Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church” (Knopf).
The Megachurch That Tried to Confront Racism

Oct 23, 2024 | newyorker.com | Casey N. Cep

When it comes to Christianity, scale often matters: the larger the data set, the worse the outlook on any number of axes, from membership to charitable giving, while the more anecdotal the account, the better things seem. Take Hahrie Han’s new book, “Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church” (Knopf).
The Oscars for the Deep State

Sep 17, 2024 | newyorker.com | Casey N. Cep

Lately, I’ve been thinking about all the wonderful investments that I, a taxpayer in the United States of America, have made. I’m not just talking about my obvious support of the common good—the almost five billion free lunches each year for schoolkids who might otherwise go hungry, the health-care coverage for sixty-seven million seniors and disabled people, the four-hundred-plus national parks, the hundred and sixty thousand miles of national highways.