The Beginning of the End
Carmen Giménez, a professor of English at Virginia Tech, is the author of six books, including Milk and Filth, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Be Recorder, which was short-listed for the National Book Award and PEN Open Book Award. This poem comes from a collection-in-progress called Nostalgia Has Such a Short Half-Life, which considers pop culture in conjunction with the end of the world.
By Carmen Giménez Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Dollars Versus Degrees
Are business interests alone to blame for global warming?
By Donald Worster Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present by Eugene Linden
Where I End and We Begin
A writer reimagines her life by blending it with others
By Sally Greene Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson
Leipzig: Community in Concrete
Grünau’s social life sprang from a muddy wasteland as families tried to turn buildings into homes and neighbors into friends
By Sam Gurwitt Thursday, February 17, 2022
Portrait of a Marriage in Six Homes
The places that sheltered my life with Shirley
By Witold Rybczynski Monday, February 14, 2022
Never Take Hope From the Patient
Sometimes the best treatment includes a healthy dose of optimism, even when it’s not warranted
By Patrick Tripp Saturday, February 12, 2022
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