Hold the Salt

Reconsidering an ancient city’s bad reputation

Carthage: A New History by Eve MacDonald

Scientists in Dreamland

What might our nightly visions mean?

Nightmare Obscura: A Dream Engineer's Guide Through the Sleeping Mind by Michelle Carr

Conjurer of Worlds

The writer who made fantasy history

The Tower and the Ruin: J. R. R. Tolkien's Creation by Michael D. C. Drout

Compassionate Curmudgeon

Why we must root ourselves in the real world

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods

Swept Away

A gusty tour of one of our planet’s primordial forces

The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind by Simon Winchester

Jessica Mitford on the British late-night talk show After Dark; August 20, 1988 (Wikimedia Commons)

Making Trouble

A British aristocrat’s leftist noblesse oblige

Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford by Carla Kaplan

All His Biographers Merely Players

Retracing the Bard’s lost years

The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare by Daniel Swift

Playwright, Poet, Outsider, Spy

The Wayward Scholar of the London Stage

A Stranger Everywhere

The inner world of one of America’s great warrior poets

Baldwin: A Love Story Nicholas Boggs

The Matriarch of Spiritual Revolution

Was Mary the real source of her prophet son’s teachings?

The Lost Mary: Rediscovering the Mother of Jesus by James D. Tabor

Blood—and Beauty—at the Root

Fifty years ago, Alex Haley’s landmark novel changed the way many Americans thought about race

Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the Worldby Lucas L. Johnson II

In Defense of Difficult Reading

The tomes of the past cultivate the lost art of sustained attention

What’s So Great About the Great Books?: Why You Should Read Classic Literature (Even Though It Might Destroy You) Naomi Kanakia

Inside Man

A young reporter’s devastating exposé of the amoral elite

How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford UniversityBy Theo Baker

Things Fall Apart

A meditation on entropy, obsolescence, and death

How We Disappear: A Personal History of InformationBy Thomas S. Mullaney

Into the Wilds

The tangled terrain of untrammeled lands

The Savage Landscape: How We Made the WildernessBy Cal Flyn

The Painter Time Forgot

An overdue reckoning of an artist’s volcanic genius

Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the WorldBy Victoria Johnson

Where Are We?

Finding our bearings has never been so risky

Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern WorldBy Katherine Dunn

Canonical Contempt

Even in the 18th century, Edward Gibbon’s misogyny set him apart

The Conversions of Edward Gibbon: A Modern BiographyBy Martha Saxton

Books Are a Star’s Best Friend

The little-known reading habits of a Hollywood icon

Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroeby Gail Crowther

Who Is Thinking?

The quest to discover the answer to an age-old question

A World Appears: A Journey into ConsciousnessBy Michael Pollan

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