Why We Are Failing to Make the Grade

Covid-19 has contributed to a crisis in America’s classrooms, but the problems predate the pandemic and are likely to outlast it

The Tornado Monument Bar

“To Father” by Nini Lungalang

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Of Dharma and Doom

A fresh translation revives the ending of an ancient Indian epic

After the War: The Last Books of the Mahabharata Wendy Doniger

More Than a Mere Tastemaker

Catherine Wilson brings self-help back to its ancient roots

Tuna

“The Singing Cat” by Stevie Smith

Poems read aloud, beautifully

How Not to Break the Ice

Critical advice for the new college student

The Butler Did It

Martin Edwards on the history of mystery

The Allure of the Enigmatic

“Mod” London takes center stage in Michelangelo Antonioni’s mind-blowing Blow-Up

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

Birthday Boy

“The Horses” by Ted Hughes

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Amy Wetsch

Life, magnified

The Weight of a Stone

Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

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