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
The Dispossessed
First we stopped noticing members of the working class, and now we’re convinced they don’t exist
By William Deresiewicz Friday, December 1, 2006
THE SCHOLAR AT 75: An Educated Guess
Who knew that mixing the intelligent and the idiosyncratic would yield a long life for a certain small quarterly?
By Ted Widmer Friday, December 1, 2006
THE SCHOLAR AT 75: Postcards from the Past
Pressing questions and persistent vitality
By Richard E. Nicholls Friday, December 1, 2006
Not Compassionate, Not Conservative
A political traditionalist critiques our pseudo-conservative president
By Ethan Fishman Friday, December 1, 2006
Scooter and Me
Professing liberal doubt in an age of fundamentalist fervor
By Nick Bromell Friday, December 1, 2006
Fear of Falling
Working in the mop-and-bucket brigade in college created the perspectives of a lifetime
By James McConkey Friday, December 1, 2006
Glorious Dust
The posthumous masterwork of an influential black historian tells how slavery itself undermined the Confederacy
By Robert Roper Friday, December 1, 2006
