The Root Problem
Harvesting wild ginseng has sustained Appalachian communities for generations—so what will happen when there are no more plants to be found?
By Matthew Denton-Edmundson
The Root Problem
Harvesting wild ginseng has sustained Appalachian communities for generations—so what will happen when there are no more plants to be found?
By Matthew Denton-Edmundson
ARTICLES
An Artist of Our Social Age
Matthew Wong broke all the rules and flourished online, but he craved what the outsider typically eschews: commercial success
By Sierra Bellows
Rooms With a View
A childhood in Haifa—before Israel attained statehood and just after—helped form an architect’s vision of what an ideal home should be
By Moshe Safdie
A Monstrous Burden
The original Godzilla illuminates the plight of Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, but what can it say about the present, about the violence endured by Asian Americans during Covid-19?
By Claire Stanford
The Degradation Drug
A medication prescribed for Parkinson’s and other diseases can transform a patient’s personality, unleashing heroic bouts of creativity or a torrent of shocking, even criminal behavior
By Carl Elliott
Averted Vision
Seeing the world anew in the aftermath of family tragedy, through the lenses of physics and theology
By Daniel O’Neill
Why We Are Failing to Make the Grade
Covid-19 has contributed to a crisis in America’s classrooms, but the problems predate the pandemic and are likely to outlast it
By Amanda Parrish Morgan
An Artist of Our Social Age
Matthew Wong broke all the rules and flourished online, but he craved what the outsider typically eschews: commercial success
By Sierra Bellows
Rooms With a View
A childhood in Haifa—before Israel attained statehood and just after—helped form an architect’s vision of what an ideal home should be
By Moshe Safdie
A Monstrous Burden
The original Godzilla illuminates the plight of Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, but what can it say about the present, about the violence endured by Asian Americans during Covid-19?
By Claire Stanford
The Degradation Drug
A medication prescribed for Parkinson’s and other diseases can transform a patient’s personality, unleashing heroic bouts of creativity or a torrent of shocking, even criminal behavior
By Carl Elliott
Averted Vision
Seeing the world anew in the aftermath of family tragedy, through the lenses of physics and theology
By Daniel O’Neill
Why We Are Failing to Make the Grade
Covid-19 has contributed to a crisis in America’s classrooms, but the problems predate the pandemic and are likely to outlast it
By Amanda Parrish Morgan
DEPARTMENTS
editor's note
tuning up
One Man’s Trash
In the windswept California desert, Noah Purifoy sculpted a visionary monument from the detritus of everyday life
By Eric Wills
The Pathogen of Hate 
It’s time we took a medical approach to dealing with a different epidemic
By Harriet A. Washington
Birds of a Feather
It’s not hard to see ourselves in the majestic, mysterious great blue heron
By Danusha Laméris
poetry
Five Poems
Then This, The Conversation, June, Tendrils of Trumpet Vine, Frame Structure With Post and Lattice 2, Breath
By Forrest Gander
anniversaries
fiction
commonplace book
Book essay
Freedom Tales
Long before the contentious school board fights of today, Lydia Maria Child tried to help America’s children understand their country’s racial transgressions
By Lydia Moland
Dissident Lit
Vladimir Nabokov and the novel that nourished the souls of a generation of would-be revolutionaries
By Richard Roper
book reviews
Power of the Peoples
American history was shaped as much by Native Americans as by their colonizers
By Andrew Graybill
Building Up and Breaking Down
What happens when the structures we erect plunge us into despair?
By Amanda Kolson Hurley
Jena-Gadda-Da-Vida
The brief flowering of an intellectual mecca in 1790s Germany
By Steven G. Kellman
