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
Collateral Damage
The Civil War only enhanced George Whitman’s soldierly satisfaction; for his brother Walt, however, the horrors halted an outpouring of great poetry
By Robert Roper Monday, December 1, 2008
My Bright Abyss
I never felt the pain of unbelief until I believed. But belief itself is hardly painless.
By Christian Wiman Monday, December 1, 2008
The High Road to Narnia
C. S. Lewis and his friend J. R. R. Tolkien believed that truths are universal and that stories reveal them
By George Watson Monday, December 1, 2008
Cal & Liz & Ted & Sylvia
The corresponding prose of midcentury poets
By Sudip Bose Monday, December 1, 2008
Letters of Ted Hughesselected and edited by Christopher Reid, Farrar, Straus and Giroux /Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell edited by Thomas Travisano with Saskia Hamilton, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A Passion for Architecture
Nuggets from a critical gold mine
By Stanley Abercrombie Monday, December 1, 2008
On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change By Ada Louise Huxtable
Let Me Count the Ways
Are we getting more obsessive or more compulsive about diagnosing?
By Richard Restak Monday, December 1, 2008
Obsession: A History By Lennard J. Davis
Lucid Madness
A massacre of Apache women and children, and the difficulties of telling their story
By William Howarth Monday, December 1, 2008
Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History By Karl Jacoby
Of Time and the Camera
An art critic and historian turns his attention to contemporary photography
By Andy Grundberg Monday, December 1, 2008
Why Photography Matters Now as Art as Never Before By Michael Fried
