Over There

A pugnacious public intellectual looks to Europe for his ideal

Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century By Tony Judt

Intimacy

Revisiting the gritty Roman neighborhood of his youth, a writer discovers a world of his own invention

Pullovers

Knitting a new life in America after a mother’s suicide, long ago in Japan

Democracy in Three Dimensions?

How the nation’s capital rose from a fetid forest on the backs of slaves

Washington: The Making of the American Capital By Fergus M. Bordewich

Ireland Revised

Where the Celtic Tiger came from, and where it has gone

Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change 1970–2000 By R. F. Foster

Repatriating Art

A museum director examines the controversy over whether nations own their cultural artifacts

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage By James Cuno

The Bout

When George Plimpton, the boyish editor of The Paris Review, went three rounds with the light-heavyweight champion of the world

Antarctica: Cold Comfort

The National Science Foundation funds dozens of projects in Antarctica to study the effects of climate change. As U.S. government agencies are stripped of their funding and autonomy, read this piece to remind yourself of the importance of scientific research.

Unpulled Punches

A Most Interesting Young Man

Was that Bob Dylan my sister met on a weir above Woodstock?

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

“The Horses” by Edwin Muir

Poems read aloud, beautifully

The Snow Maiden

Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice

Ho Ho Horror

Why not make this Christmas a little darker?

A Story for Christmas

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