Rage, Muse

The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten

Martha Foley’s Granddaughters

What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett

To Catch a Sunset

Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love

The Next New Thing

In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before

Imperfecta

Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing

The Widower’s Lament
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After the death of the poet Wendy Barker, her grieving husband turns to the literature of loss

The World at the End of a Line

The grandson of one of American literature’s Lost Generation novelists reflects on his namesake’s love of the sea

The Goddess Complex

A set of revered stone deities was stolen from a temple in northwestern India; their story can tell us much about our current reckoning with antiquities trafficking

Last Rites and Comic Flights

A funeral in a 1984 Japanese film offers moments of slapstick amid the solemnity

The Believer

When nobody would touch Joyce’s manuscript, Sylvia Beach stepped in

A Long Cold View of History

How ice, worms, and dirt made us what we are today

Performance

Is there a genetic predisposition to sing Streisand on street corners?

Socrates' Mistake

The philosopher’s view of knowledge—forever demanding explanations, justifications, definitions, and criteria—is fantasy, and a dangerous fantasy

A Standard Oil Childhood

Oil refeneries, sand dunes, and other objects of beauty and affection

The Big Roundup

John Lomax roamed the West, collecting classic songs from the cowboy era

Findings: Swept Away

The Glue Is Gone

The things that held us together as individuals and as a people are being lost. Can we find them again?

So Help Me God

What all fifty-four inaugural addresses, taken as one long book, tell us about American history

What We Got Wrong

How Arabs look at the self, their society, and their political institutions

The Coming of the French

My life as an English professor

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