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

Product Placement

W. S. Merwin’s The Book of Fables

Wonder can matter more than statistics and facts

Beer with Peter

In the spell of a great storyteller

Top Banana

When fruit was king

Driven to Distraction

Can’t concentrate? You’re not alone.

Unfinished Business

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Collected Stories

Drippingly romantic and dead on

Michael

Lessons learned in the schoolyard

Too Soon?

How “disaster humor” works

In Praise of Slime Molds

The extraordinary capabilities of the blob

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