The Tower and the Glory

The venues built for the London Olympics may be controversial, but do they make an artistic statement? And what will their legacy be?

Taming Grief

On poems by Kevin Young

Letter from Afghanistan: A Gathering Menace

Traveling with U.S. troops gives insights into the recent massacre

Memory and Forgetting

Death by Treacle

Sentiment surfaces fast and runs hot in public life, dumbing it down and crippling intimacy in private life

Privacy

The Universe as Kitchen

Cosmic ovens, nebular refrigerators, and the predictive power of physical law

Mr. Zinsser, I Presume

Affirmative Inaction

Opposition to affirmative action has drastically reduced minority enrollment at public universities; private institutions have the power and the responsibility to reverse the trend

Big Thinker

The diplomat who argued for “containment”—and lived to regret it

George F. Kennan: An American Life By John Lewis Gaddis

Maximalisma

A professor endeavors to separate treasure from trash—before her children have to do it for her

Learning to Be Social

What might Rousseau teach us about how to live with others?

American Carthage

Echoes from the ancient conflicts between Hannibal’s city and Rome continue to reverberate well into the present

Raspberry Heaven

A yearly back-yard harvest opens a door to the divine

A Midsummer Night’s Stream

Can digital performances save America’s nonprofit theaters?

After the Fallout

On jellyfish babies, my father’s pain, and the legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific

In the Matter of the Commas

For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision, logic, individuality, and music

Splitting Our Sides

A new biography of a comedy pioneer

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Liveby Susan Morrison

Mr. Olympia

When the ancient Greeks looked at human muscle, they saw something different than we do

In the Mushroom

True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business

● NEWSLETTER

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