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

“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Coronavirus: This Is Not a Plague

The metaphor obscures clear thinking

A Good Time for Opera

Taking It to the Street

The pandemic as seen from my front porch

A Century-Old Immune-System Booster?

One widely used TB vaccine might be offering some protection

Epitaph for a Genre

Crime Doesn’t Pay in The Killing

Wind and Rain

The Anxiety of Culpability

The limits of what we can know and what we can do about it

“Driving Glove” by Claudia Emerson

Poems read aloud, beautifully

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