Fidelity and the Dead Singer

for Michael Donaghy

Medication Nation

Our increasing reliance on drugs—prescribed, over-the-counter, illegal, and ordered online like pizza—suggests we have a deeper problem

Climate Change in a New Light

Photographing the shifting borders of the Alps

A Model Marriage

An intimate portrait of a couple who helped forge a nation

The Washingtons By Flora Fraser

How Chemistry Became Biology

And how LUCA, Earth’s first living cell, became Lucas, my adorable grandnephew

Waves of Change

Five questions about the future of the Pacific Ocean

Son of Gonzo

Living in the aftermath of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll

Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson By Juan F. Thompson

Spotted Opera

An excerpt from a new opera

Awakenings

The advent of new religions in the 1800s led to fierce debates that persist today

Riddles for the Afterlife

Decoding the hieroglyphs that accompanied the dead pharaohs

The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts By Susan Brind Morrow

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

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

The Weight of a Stone

Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

Double Exposure

On our first memories

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

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

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