Heart of Semi-Darkness

A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors

Masters of Horror and Magic

The German folklorists who helped build a nation

For Want of Touch

The astonishing breadth of our passions

Imperiled Planet

The ecological havoc we’ve wrought

The Burning Earth: A History by Sunil Amrith

Ground Truth

A story of dirt, dollars, and death

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson

Insisting on the Positive

A popular historian’s philosophical musings

On Freedom by Timothy Snyder

A Stranger in the Seven Hills

A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City

Roman Year: A Memoir by André Aciman

Mortal Coils

We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable

Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death by Susana Monsó

Silent Partner

The union that may have made possible a writer’s late flourishing

A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson by Camille Peri

Schmaltz of Significance

How the first talkie treated the myth of the melting pot

Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer by Richard Bernstein

Shell Shock and Awe

The enduring terror of the trenches

Soldiers Don’t Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry, and Mental Illness During the First World Warby Charles Glass

Notes and Outtakes

Good writing never gets old

Tabula Rasa: Volume 1by John McPhee

Someone’s Gotta Do It

On transforming monotony into meaning

Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Livingby John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle

Death in Drohobych

A new biography of a Polish literary master

Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of Historyby Benjamin Balint

Our Pragmatic Present

There is no prescribed meaning or purpose to our lives—and that’s okay

Mind in Nature: John Dewey, Cognitive Science, and a Naturalistic Philosophy for Livingby Mark Johnson and Jay Schulkin

From Mandate to Nation State

How a failed Arab rebellion ensured Israel’s survival

Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict by Oren Kessler

Doors of Perception

The often unreliable ways we interpret reality

Where We Meet the World: The Story of the Sensesby Ashley Ward

Culture Shock

The hidden history of reverse colonization

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europeby Caroline Dodds Pennock

Life at the Bottom

It’s not just the rich who victimize the poor

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

The Center Cannot Hold

A kaleidoscopic journey through a divided country

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil Warby Jeff Sharlet

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