Hot Rocks

A scientist’s love of lava

The Last Volcano: A Man, a Romance, and the Quest to Understand Nature’s Most Magnificent Fury By John Dvorak

Speaking in Tongues

The ancient, tangled roots of modern language

Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty LanguagesBy Gaston Dorren / Written in Stone: A Journey through the Stone Age and the Origins of Modern Language By Christopher Stevens

A Lifetime Spent Bearing Witness

The literary giant who rose from the ashes of a people

The Complete Works of Primo Levi Edited by Ann Goldstein

Cosmic Art

An inquiry into the scientific significance of elegance

A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design By Frank Wilczek

Anyone Home?

The centuries-long debate over what resides between our ears

Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind By George Makari

We Need to Chat

How technology has changed the way we relate to one another

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age By Sherry Turkle

Living Like White People

The disorientation of growing up privileged and black

Negroland: A Memoir By Margo Jefferson

The Wisdom of the Ages

Looking to the classics to steel yourself against life’s cruelties

The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today By Bryan Doerries

It Takes a Laboratory

Science is no longer the domain of solitary experimenters

Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex By Michael Hiltzik

Boldly Going No More

The space shuttle program’s unheralded demise

Leaving Orbit: Notes From the Last Days of American Spaceflight By Margaret Lazarus Dean

Heart of Semi-Darkness

A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors

Masters of Horror and Magic

The German folklorists who helped build a nation

For Want of Touch

The astonishing breadth of our passions

Imperiled Planet

The ecological havoc we’ve wrought

The Burning Earth: A Historyby Sunil Amrith

Ground Truth

A story of dirt, dollars, and death

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippiby Wright Thompson

Insisting on the Positive

A popular historian’s philosophical musings

On Freedomby Timothy Snyder

A Stranger in the Seven Hills

A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City

Roman Year: A Memoirby André Aciman

Mortal Coils

We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable

Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Deathby Susana Monsó

Silent Partner

The union that may have made possible a writer’s late flourishing

A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevensonby Camille Peri

Schmaltz of Significance

How the first talkie treated the myth of the melting pot

Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singerby Richard Bernstein

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