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 Union by 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

“The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers

Poems read aloud, beautifully

“Sonnet” by Elizabeth Bishop

Poems read aloud, beautifully

A Pioneering Appetite

The story of America’s first culinary celebrity

The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James BeardJohn Birdsall

Gangsters in Love

Revisiting Sergio Leone’s 1984 classic, Once Upon a Time in America

Do You Believe in Magic?

A global history of our oldest—and most maligned—practice

Verifiable Truths

The thinkers who tried to strip metaphysics from philosophy

The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna CircleDavid Edmonds

Out on a Limb

Turning Leaves and Turning Pages

“Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by W. B. Yeats

Poems read aloud, beautifully

The Homing Instinct

Ah, Vienna, the city of my youth

Reclaiming Beauty and Dignity

Louise Glück can be both austere and funny

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