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
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 Parts by Helen King
The Center Cannot Hold
A kaleidoscopic journey through a divided country
By Elizabeth D. Samet Wednesday, March 1, 2023
The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil Warby Jeff Sharlet
Drunk on Dub
The new Caribbean sounds of Ishion Hutchinson
By Langdon Hammer Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Night Visitors
The power of music at a New York City soup kitchen
By Vivien Schweitzer Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Tales of Memory and Forgetting
What happens when we cease to be who we were?
By Scott Stossel Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain by Dasha Kiperby Dasha Kiper
Errant Thought
Can we keep the Enlightenment from dimming?
By Steven G. Kellman Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hopeby Sarah Bakewell
The Friend Zone
Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas on what makes a marriage tick were downright radical for their time
By Robert Zaretsky Sunday, February 19, 2023
