Net Gains
Nabokov’s profitable summer chasing butterflies and settling scores in the Utah mountains
By Robert Roper Monday, June 8, 2015
Big Shoulders
How curiosity and cognition have driven our species forward
By Louise Fabiani Monday, June 8, 2015
The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos By Leonard Mlodinow
Saigon Summer
A spy’s daughter remembers the haunting unreality of embassy life in South Vietnam before the fall
By Sara Mansfield Taber Monday, June 8, 2015
The Paper Chase
Years of tireless collecting led to one of the world’s great libraries
By Werner Gundersheimer Monday, June 8, 2015
The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger’s Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare’s First Folio By Andrea Mays
Fantastic Four
The enduring influence of a quartet of Oxford dons
By Jan Morris Monday, June 8, 2015
The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings By Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski
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
Verde
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew
By Jesse Lee Kercheval Thursday, December 12, 2024
Aging Out
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
By Anne Matthews Thursday, December 5, 2024
Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Ageby James Chappel
Under a Spell Everlasting
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war
By Samantha Rose Hill Monday, December 2, 2024
Divided Providence
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
By Robert Wilson Monday, December 2, 2024
Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Unionby Richard Carwardine
The Fair Fields
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil