Editing Ted

Someone’s Gotta Do It

On transforming monotony into meaning

Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living by John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle

Summer 2023

Six Poems

The Sound of Wood and Steel

A new exhibition explores the guitar’s power and influence in American art and life

Knowledge Before the Fall

Sometimes you simply can’t prepare for a seemingly inevitable outcome

George’s Angels

Remembering my time with Balanchine’s dancers

The Lotus Position

What does one of television’s biggest hits have to say about the nature of a certain kind of American tourism?

Look Back in Wonder

A father searches for the secret to empathy in the face of unthinkable loss

Death in Drohobych

A new biography of a Polish literary master

Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History by Benjamin Balint

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
loading

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
loading

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
loading

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

● NEWSLETTER

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