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How can we live well after 40? asks Barbara Bradley Hagerty. She could have consulted the wisdom traditions.

At his inauguration on January 20, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took an unprecedented step: after taking the oath of office, he led the nation in prayer. During his prayer, which historian Kevin Kruse notes helped make Eisenhower’s inauguration as much a “religious consecration” as a “political ceremony,” the new president asked God to “make full and complete [the executive branch’s] dedication to the service of the people.”

Eisenhower’s professed dedication to serve all the citizens of the United States and his willingness to rely upon God’s help were not entirely new. 

This harrowing story chronicles the decades-long indentured servitude of a group of intellectually disabled men that persisted until 2013. Journalist Dan Barry explains how the residents of a small town in Iowa interacted with the men who lived in their old schoolhouse, offering a mix of paternalism and kindness while failing to see the conditions under which the men were being kept. The story’s characters—the local Luth­eran church and its pastor, employees of the turkey company that exploited the men, and most significantly, the intellectually disabled men themselves—interact vividly.

Does democracy create good neighbors? Or is it the other way around?