On Virtuosity

A mastery of technique ought to be exalted, not disdained

Accidental Elegance

How chance authors the universe

Genome Tome

Twenty-three ways of looking at our ancestors

Turning the Tide

How Rachel Carson became a woman of letters

Roosevelt Redux: Part Two

Robert M. Ball and the battle for Social Security

Summer Visitors

Buy a house in Maine and they will come. And come.

Summer 2005

Findings: The Battered Trunk

The Salome Factor

How the sexualization of concert dance helped end a golden age.

Roosevelt Redux

Robert M. Ball and the battle for Social Security

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apartby Nicholas Carr

Burned

“The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Paige Ledom

Out of the ordinary

The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend

How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths

Old Christ Church in Alexandria. Virginia, attended by General Robert E. Lee in his youth and pictured here in 1911 (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/Wikimedia Commons)

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Unionby Richard Carwardine

“The Terrorist, He’s Watching” by Wislawa Szymborska

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

Above the River of Your Longing

Two new prompts

Casa Gorín

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