The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday

Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by 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 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

The Bloom Has Faded

Reforming the Western canon may not go far enough

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

What can the American chestnut teach us about ourselves?

Founding Falsehoods

Reconsidering how we’ve been telling stories about American history

“A Heap of Juneteenths”

How the word, and the holiday, came about

Sheltering in Place with Sei Shōnagon

The author of The Pillow Book speaks across 10 centuries

The Land of Solitary Bees

As bee populations decline, researchers pursue new routes

Ceremony

Father Figures

Fourteen books to celebrate Father’s Day

“Sailing to Byzantium” by W. B. Yeats

Poems read aloud, beautifully

America Upside Down

Our country is in the midst of a paradigm shift

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