Apollo and Dionysus
Henri Cole combines the formal and the sensual
By Langdon Hammer Monday, September 1, 2008
Potted History
Learning more about slave life in South Carolina from a legendary potter-poet
By Scott Reynolds Nelson Monday, September 1, 2008
Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave By Leonard Todd
Where Does American History Begin?
Mixing geography with invention, the first explorers and mapmakers made the New World a very hard place to pin down
By Ted Widmer Monday, September 1, 2008
Something Called Terrorism
In a speech given at Harvard 22 years ago
and never before published, Leonard Bernstein
offered a warning that remains timely
By Leonard Bernstein Monday, September 1, 2008
Shaking Habit’s House
Critic James Wood preaches a return to the realism of Flaubert
By Sarah L. Courteau Monday, September 1, 2008
How Fiction Works By James Wood, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Most Important Election in History
Is it possible to elect a president without invoking that phrase?
By Christopher Clausen Monday, September 1, 2008
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
Ideology as Anatomy
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
By Sierra Bellows Monday, December 2, 2024
Immaculate Forms: A History of the Female Body in Four Partsby Helen King
