But Not the Octopus

“Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Meditations on Marcus

The philosopher-emperor who reigned during an age of pandemic and war

This Is How an Empire Falls

The discomforting parallels between our current moment and the end of Rome

A Pre-Columbian Bestiary

Fantastic creatures of indigenous Latin America

The Bird’s Song

The Windmills of Our Minds

Reading Cervantes during the pandemic

Mack Sikora

Walled Off

Figures in the Frame

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 Unionby Richard Carwardine

Cudillero

“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 Christopheby 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

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