What Jesus Did

Forget about Christ as secular sage, historical figure, or even as Christian

Two Strangers, Three Stories

All the lonely people and where they come from

Shouldn’t There Be a Word … ?

The holes in our language and the never-ending search for words to fill them

The Idea of Bombay

Bollywood epitomized modernity for a boy in a distant province. As an adult, he sees a troubled city.

Henry James vs. the Robber Barons

Why Italian art should stay in England, where it belongs, and not fall into the hands of foreigners

Findings: Birdman of America

The New Anti-Semitism

First religion, then race, then what?

My Holocaust Problem

If we cannot speak of it—though speak of it we must—how do we remember what happened to the Jews of Europe?

Palladio in the Rough

A South Carolinian builds classical revival houses that really look old

Fadeaway Jumper

A Sunday-afternoon player of a certain age says his farewell to basketball

Asteroid Hunters

The scientists and engineers who defend our planet day and night from potentially hazardous space rocks

Tiger Mom

At a forest preserve in India, a writer sees the world anew and learns how to focus her son’s restless mind

American Carthage
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Echoes from the ancient conflicts between Hannibal’s city and Rome continue to reverberate well into the present

Lessons From Harlem
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A white blues player’s streetside education

Maximalisma
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A professor endeavors to separate treasure from trash—before her children have to do it for her

Raspberry Heaven
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A yearly back-yard harvest opens a door to the divine

In the Matter of the Commas
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For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision, logic, individuality, and music

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

The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend

How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

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