Confounding Father
Thomas Jefferson and the economics of slavery
By T. H. Breen Thursday, October 4, 2012
Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves By Henry Wiencek
The Clintons Up Close
A friendship between two couples yields insights into a presidency and a marriage
By Jane Warwick Yoder and Edwin M. Yoder Jr. Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Too Big to Fail and Too Risky to Exist
Four years after the 2008 financial crisis, banks are behaving more recklessly than ever
By William J. Quirk Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Questions of Being
What if our minds are the ultimate reality?
By Jay Tolson Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story By Jim Holt
Liberty Is a Slow Fruit
Lincoln the deliberate emancipator
By Louis P. Masur Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Kerouac in His Own Words
An old friend explores his search for a new approach to the novel
By Deborah Baker Tuesday, September 4, 2012
The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac By Joyce Johnson
Mortify Our Wolves
The struggle back to life and faith in the face of pain and the certainty of death
By Christian Wiman Tuesday, September 4, 2012
A Monster at Large
Crime, politics, and the vagaries of Japanese justice
By James Fallows Tuesday, September 4, 2012
People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo — And the Evil That Swallowed Her Up By Richard Lloyd Parry
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
By Rosanna Warren Monday, December 2, 2024
