A Kingdom of Little Animals

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of microorganisms made possible the revolutionary advances in biology and medicine that continue to inform our Covid age

Frontline Oracle

A new biography of America’s most beloved grunt reporter

The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II by David Chrisinger

We Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

After Covid-19, what might be next?

Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic by Emily Monosson

False Prophets

A recent film about a Black megachurch is often hilarious, but its flaws reside in the story it doesn’t tell

Don’t Forget Intuition

The art of doing science

In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems by Giorgio Parisi

Putting the Story Back in History

Hayden White on truth, facts, and the allure of a well-told tale

Shell Shock and Awe

The enduring terror of the trenches

Soldiers Don’t Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry, and Mental Illness During the First World War by Charles Glass

Notes and Outtakes

Good writing never gets old

Tabula Rasa: Volume 1 by John McPhee

In the Aftermath of Civil War

The art of observance in the lyrics of Vidyan Ravinthiran

Get Me Rewrite!

The relationship between a renowned author and a consummate editor can sometimes make for high drama

Verde

Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew

Magic Men

Aging Out

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night

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

Double Exposure
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On our first memories

Old Christ Church in Alexandria. Virginia, attended by General Robert E. Lee in his youth and pictured here in 1911 (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/Wikimedia Commons)

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Unionby Richard Carwardine

The Fair Fields
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Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil

Ideology as Anatomy

How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives

Immaculate Forms: A History of the Female Body in Four Partsby Helen King

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

Island Royalty

A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christopheby Marlene L. Daut

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