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

Double Exposure
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On our first memories

The Fair Fields
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Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil

In the Mushroom
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True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business

The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend
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How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths

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

Illustration by Aad Goudappel

Granaries of Language
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Dictionaries are far more than alphabetized collections of words

The Weight of a Stone
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Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

Reborn in the City of Light

At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives

Thoreau’s Pencils

How might a newly discovered
connection to slavery change
our understanding of an abolitionist
hero and his writing?

Searching for Tommy and Rosie

What my mother’s diaries told me about her life and my own

2022: A Space Emergency

Without international agreements, we are making the heavens dangerously crowded and potentially lethal

Women’s Burden

We like to think the painful sacrifices our mothers made are in the past. But are they?

On Aging

Taking measure of a life well lived

Portrait of a Marriage in Six Homes

The places that sheltered my life with Shirley

Never Take Hope From the Patient

Sometimes the best treatment includes a healthy dose of optimism, even when it’s not warranted

From Murderpan to Mattapan

A writer’s traumatic experiences lead him to travel in time to the places where he was hurt

Lessons From an Unwritten Autobiography

From doubt and despair to faith and love

The Insidious Ethic of Conscience

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