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

Island Royalty

A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

Monster Mash

How a child deals with dragons signals adult mental health

Jump

Joe Strummer Day

Build a raging, leaping fire, okay?

Limericks That Leave You Hanging

When we expect to hear a rhyme and don’t

Tougher Than We Think

New study pinpoints a source of resilience to stress disorders

Hot Toddy

Lighten Up

The Springfield Greys

Evenings with dad

Tuesdays with Siri

Persecution Complex

A young Bolshevik revolutionary’s unlikely and bloody rise to power

Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 By Stephen Kotkin

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