Island Royalty
A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary
By Madison Smartt Bell Monday, January 13, 2025
The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by 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
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 Age by 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 Union by 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
Living on $500,000 a Year
What F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tax returns reveal about his life and times
By William J. Quirk Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Art in the Time of War
A prescient and courageous few safeguarded Italy’s patrimony
By Susannah Rutherglen Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The Venus Fixers: The Remarkable Story of the Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy's Art During World War II By Ilaria Dagnini Brey, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A Mindful Beauty
What poetry and applied mathematics have in common
By Joel E. Cohen Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The Common Good
The case for a standardized curriculum for all American children
By Richard D. Kahlenberg Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools By E.D. Hirsch Jr.
Armchair Travelers
The Renaissance writers and humanists Petrarch and Boccaccio turned to geography to understand the works of antiquity
By Toby Lester Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Film Release
A woman’s burdened life and transcendent photographs
By Shirley Streshinsky Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits By Linda Gordon
Mother Country
A daughter examines a life played out in romantic defiance of bad fortune
By Evelyn Toynton Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Relativity and All That
Big Science bears down on Einstein’s equation
By Apurva Narechania Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Why Does E=mc2? (And Why Should We Care?) By Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
