“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Poems read aloud, beautifully
By Amanda Holmes Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Skin Deep, Only Deeper
How people have used makeup to define—and defy—their roles in society
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, July 16, 2021
Last Laugh
A memoir of jokes and jokers
By Steve Macone Thursday, July 15, 2021
Inside Comedy: The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades by David Steinberg
Seeing People History Ignores
Susan Meiselas’s focus on vernacular photographs
By Lindsay Harris Saturday, July 10, 2021
When History Rhymes
The Nikole Hannah-Jones controversy calls to mind an earlier racially motivated effort to stifle free speech at the University of North Carolina
By Sally Greene Thursday, July 8, 2021
Future Fears
How a 19th-century writer and polymath anticipated the modern world
By David Brown Tuesday, July 6, 2021
The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch
“The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers
Poems read aloud, beautifully
By Amanda Holmes Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Island Royalty
A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary
By Madison Smartt Bell Monday, January 13, 2025
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
By Jonathan Liebson Wednesday, January 8, 2025
The Weight of a Stone
Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology
By Megan Craig Thursday, January 2, 2025
“The Horses” by Edwin Muir
Poems read aloud, beautifully
By Amanda Holmes Tuesday, December 31, 2024
The Snow Maiden
Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice