Most journalism is ephemeral. The news reports, opinion columns, and commentaries on sports, fashion, health, and dining are brushed aside by tomorrow’s headlines and shifting interests. Here today and gone tomorrow are the usual watchwords in the Fourth Estate. We readers may have our favorite writers—I, for example, particularly relish the editorials by Conrad Black, Roger Kimball, and Joy Pullmann—but nearly all their observations, like mine, are written in water rather than on stone. Of course, there are exceptions. Some still read the journalism of George Orwell or Ernie Pyle, who was a World War II chronicler of American foot soldiers and sailors. The literary and cultural pieces by Joseph Epstein, one of the finest essayists of the past century, are collected in a number of books. We read these older newspapers and magazine articles because they strike a chord or possess a timeless theme. In general, however, we take …