Shooting a Dog

During a deployment in Iraq, a young soldier confronts a fundamental paradox about the masculine temperament in wartime

Lighting a Match

“The Coming of Light” by Mark Strand

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Tammy West

Climate grief (without despair)

Go Gentle

Selections from Hafiz’s Little Book of Life

Poems read aloud, beautifully

In the Forest of the Colobus

At a Gambian nature reserve, troops of endangered monkeys—and numerous other creatures—enact a grand drama that plumbs the mysteries of life, death, and regeneration

Notes From the Front

Henry Kissinger’s Vietnam diary shows that he knew the war was lost a decade before it ended

Commonplace Book

All Dolled Up

How American Girl transformed the doll world—and why millennials love it so

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

New Year, Old Year

“The Horses” by Edwin Muir

Poems read aloud, beautifully

The Snow Maiden

Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice

A Story for Christmas

“Snow” by Louis MacNeice

Poems read aloud, beautifully

● NEWSLETTER

Please enter a valid email address
That address is already in use
The security code entered was incorrect
Thanks for signing up