In the Forest of the Colobus

At a Gambian nature reserve, troops of endangered monkeys—and numerous other creatures—enact a grand drama that plumbs the mysteries of life, death, and regeneration

Notes From the Front

Henry Kissinger’s Vietnam diary shows that he knew the war was lost a decade before it ended

Bodies Grotesque and Beautiful

Searching for aesthetics and meaning in the monstrous

Art Monsters: Unruly Female Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin

Song Gatherer

The ghostly Cantares Mexicanos, as rendered by Edgar Garcia

Comfort Fare

Commonplace Book

Air Show

What the rise of an NBA superstar tells us about ourselves

Jumpman: The Making and Meaning of Michael Jordan by Johnny Smith

Remembering Elsa Schiaperelli

All Dolled Up

How American Girl transformed the doll world—and why millennials love it so

Risk

Above the River of Your Longing

Two new prompts

Casa Gorín

“The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Island Royalty

A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christopheby Marlene L. Daut

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

Birthday Boy

“The Horses” by Ted Hughes

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Amy Wetsch

Life, magnified

The Weight of a Stone

Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

New Year, Old Year

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