Chekhov’s Journey

Finding the ideal of freedom in a rugged prison colony

Beaten Boys and Frantic Pets

A close reading of Tom Sawyer reveals why Mark Twain isn’t nearly as funny as he thinks he is

Travels with Alfred

On assignment with one of the world’s great photographers

Tristes Tropiques

Remembering the screenwriter of North by Northwest

All the Extras

When the Criterion Collection releases a classic on DVD, the movie is only the beginning

The Latches of Paradise

Charles Wright’s meditations and memories at year’s end

Appalachian Autumn

Veritas

Berlin: War and Remembrance

Youth

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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