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

Strangers and Mirrors

Orson Welles’s The Stranger (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Cræft in the Time of Corona

What we make with our hands tell us a lot about ourselves, even in a pandemic

Déconfinement

The French are cautiously re-emerging into a world of uncertainty

Radical Elegies

At a time when many of us are cut off from the natural world, Wordsworth seems more essential than ever

Plane silhouetted against clouds

The Beauty of Fluid Motion

How the future became fashionable

Jet Age Aesthetic: The Glamour of Media in Motion by Vanessa R. Schwartz

El Estanco

Vegetables, mainly cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, garlic, and basil, spread out on a blue background. Two wooden forks are crossed among the vegetables.

11 Culinary Books with Words to Savor

Food writing so good, you can practically taste it

“The Trees” by Philip Larkin

Our Posthumous Lives

So many important things must wait

Spy Games and Secrets

Matthew Quirk opens the dossier on thriller writing

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