A Biographer Looks Back
A noted practitioner reveals her tricks of the trade
By Ann Jefferson Monday, December 2, 2019
Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me by Deirdre Bair
A Founding Class
Two new studies of the man from Monticello
By Henry Wiencek Monday, December 2, 2019
Thomas Jefferson’s Education by Alan Taylor Revolutionary Brothers by Tom Chaffin
The Greatest Sexual Revolution
How World War II prefigured the ’60s
By Jon Zobenica Monday, December 2, 2019
Questions of Inspiration
Should we try to see the poet in her poetry?
By Rachel Hadas Monday, December 2, 2019
Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop by Thomas Travisano
Changing Trains
In Stuttgart, in 1943, my mother escaped bombs falling on the station. Has her terror expressed itself in me?
By Catharina Coenen Monday, December 2, 2019
The Barber of Language
A new collection from a celebrated prose stylist
By Sandra M. Gilbert Monday, December 2, 2019
Essays One by Lydia Davis
Kiev: New Leader, Old Troubles
Dysfunction still prevails in Ukraine, especially in the war-torn east; for the rest of the country, the challenges are financial.
By Megan Buskey Monday, December 2, 2019
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
