Pullovers

Knitting a new life in America after a mother’s suicide, long ago in Japan

Democracy in Three Dimensions?

How the nation’s capital rose from a fetid forest on the backs of slaves

Washington: The Making of the American Capital By Fergus M. Bordewich

Her Own Society

When Emily Dickinson and her radical friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson met for the first time

Ireland Revised

Where the Celtic Tiger came from, and where it has gone

Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change 1970–2000 By R. F. Foster

Six Poems

Repatriating Art

A museum director examines the controversy over whether nations own their cultural artifacts

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage By James Cuno

The Bout

When George Plimpton, the boyish editor of The Paris Review, went three rounds with the light-heavyweight champion of the world

Antarctica: Cold Comfort

The National Science Foundation funds dozens of projects in Antarctica to study the effects of climate change. As U.S. government agencies are stripped of their funding and autonomy, read this piece to remind yourself of the importance of scientific research.

Unpulled Punches

The Art of Surprise

The Grasshopper and His Space Odyssey

A scientist remembers the celebrated science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke

Hope

Response to Our Spring Issue

Grand Horse Opera

The best Westerns celebrate our history and criticize the ugly stereotypes of the genre

Confluences of Sound and Sense

Kay Ryan’s idiosyncratic approach to the commonplace

Happy with Crocodiles

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers

Over There

A pugnacious public intellectual looks to Europe for his ideal

Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century By Tony Judt

The End of the Black American Narrative

A new century calls for new stories grounded in the present, leaving behind the painful history of slavery and its consequences

Intimacy

Revisiting the gritty Roman neighborhood of his youth, a writer discovers a world of his own invention

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