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
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
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
By Michael Autrey Monday, December 2, 2024
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths
By Janna Malamud Smith Monday, December 2, 2024
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 Monday, December 2, 2024
Granaries of Language
Dictionaries are far more than alphabetized collections of words
By Ilan Stavans Monday, December 2, 2024
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 Monday, December 2, 2024
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
By Rosanna Warren Thursday, October 24, 2024
Thoreau’s Pencils
How might a newly discovered
connection to slavery change
our understanding of an abolitionist
hero and his writing?
By Augustine Sedgewick Thursday, October 17, 2024
The End Is Only the Beginning
Our species may soon evolve, with the help of technology, into something more than human
By Adam Kirsch Thursday, January 19, 2023
The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?
Read Alice Walker’s first published essay, which won first place in our 1967 essay contest
By Alice Walker Monday, January 16, 2023
I Am Become a Name
The uncle I never knew and the war that was his
By Karl Kirchwey Thursday, January 5, 2023
Foreign Af fairs
The many lives and loves of the mysterious Saint-John Perse
By Rosanna Warren Thursday, December 29, 2022
Anatomy of a Collision
The sudden intersection of one’s professional and parental identities can lead to a strange kind of work-life imbalance
By Jessica Love Thursday, December 22, 2022
The Road to Paradise and Back
Fires in the West, hurricanes in the East—what it’s like on the ground as we confront our rapidly changing world
By David Gessner Thursday, December 1, 2022
The Corals and the Capitalist
The key to avoiding an ecological catastrophe might be found in the wealth of nations and the spirit of innovation
By Juli Berwald Thursday, December 1, 2022
An Artist of Our Social Age
Matthew Wong broke all the rules and flourished online, but he craved what the outsider typically eschews: commercial success
By Sierra Bellows Thursday, November 10, 2022
Rooms With a View
A childhood in Haifa—before Israel attained statehood and just after—helped form an architect’s vision of what an ideal home should be
By Moshe Safdie Thursday, November 3, 2022
A Monstrous Burden
The original Godzilla illuminates the plight of Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, but what can it say about the present, about the violence endured by Asian Americans during Covid-19?