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From the Washington Post:

AMATITLAN, Guatemala — When a global glut drove the price of coffee beans to a historic low five years ago, Julio Flores almost shuttered the hillside coffee farm that had been in his family for four generations. But today Flores's farm is prospering as soaring demand for premium coffee brings new wealth to the old fields of Central America. … Flores said what saved his farm was a clearer understanding that First World consumers want only the best beans in their cappuccinos and lattes and that they are willing to pay for it. So he stopped using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, planted avocados below the 4,500-foot elevation that is generally required for the best beans and tended more carefully to his mile-high coffee plants. … "A revolution has taken place in five years," said William Hempstead, a director of the Guatemalan National Coffee Association, which has been helping farmers increase quality to further distance themselves from such mass producers of commercial grade coffee as Vietnam.

BANGOR, Maine — This city of 32,000 is used to diverted flights. Nestled in the northeastern corner of the country, Bangor International has made a cottage industry of taking in flights that run into the trouble over the Atlantic. It has a runway more than two miles long, a U.S. attorney's office and FBI agents who live within minutes of the terminal. For airline pilots, the combination makes Bangor a favorite unscheduled landing spot. The incidents are so common that local nurses say they often treat patients from the diverted flights: an assaulted flight attendant, a heart attack victim, a woman in labor. … Bangor International also plays a small supporting role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as flights ferrying troops to and from the Middle East often stop here to refuel and allow service members to make a quick call home. Many remember their touchdown here fondly because it is the last or first chance they have to step on U.S. soil.

• John Updike on Robert Alter's The Five Books of Moses in the New Yorker.
• The Augustine and the ethics of lying, from First Things.
• Heiko Oberman's new views on the Reformation, in brief from First Things.
• Ten essays on Dwight Moody and Lutherans in the 21st century, in brief from First Things.
• Salonica, Greece, and its heritage of religious diversity, from the Economist.
• The dark side of the utopian Brook Farm, from Common-place.
• The book of Revelation in Western history, in brief from First Things.
• A 1,000-page masterpiece on physics and metaphysics, says the New Criterion.
• The 'creative tension' between science and religion, in brief from First Things.
• A level-headed analysis of Israel and the Palestinians, says Benjamin Schwarz in the Atlantic Monthly (second item).
• Britain's class divide, from the London Review of Books.
• Volume 7 of the history of California, from the Christian Science Monitor.
• The architecture of airports, from the Washington Post.
• The history of hip, from the Post.
• Madame Bovary: Good story, bad translation, says Clive James in the Atlantic.
• A rugged and honest novel about an African-American emigrant to Liberia, from the Washington Post.
• Godzilla at 50, from the New York Press.
• Biographies: Franz Kafka—e.e. cummings - Genghis Khan—Luciano Pavarotti
• September book blog
• Previous/Archive/About/Feedback/Links/CT blog

Nathan Bierma is editorial assistant at Books & Culture. He writes the weekly "On Language" column for the Chicago Tribune.

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