An Epic in Flux

Gilgamesh, the world’s first great literary work, is still being pieced together

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh By David Damrosch

Design Problem

Does the internal physiology of animals imply a harmony of structure and function?

The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself By J. Scott Turner

The Historical Present

Robert Fagle’s bold solutions to the problem of Virgil

The Aeneid By Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles

Pleasure out of Desperation

Thomas Eakins, yearning for the ideal in a materialistic age

Portrait: The Life of Thomas Eakins By William S. McFeely

Organized Violence

In the last century, where did warfare end and genocide begin?

The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West By Niall Ferguson

Poised Between the Ancient and the New

Isaac B. Singer: A Life By Florence Noiville

What if Nature Had Been Thrifty?

The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny By Ivar Ekeland

Birthday Suit

Skin: A Natural History By Nina G. Jablonski

Environmentalism for Outsiders

The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism By Aaron Sachs

Peaceable Kingdom

The Medici Giraffe and Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power By Marina Belozerskaya

Scientists in Dreamland

What might our nightly visions mean?

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

Conjurer of Worlds

The writer who made fantasy history

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

Hold the Salt

Reconsidering an ancient city’s bad reputation

Carthage: A New Historyby Eve MacDonald

The Minotaur’s Muses

The romantic cruelty of a brilliant artist

Hidden Portraits: Six Women Who Shaped Picasso's Lifeby Sue Roe

Compassionate Curmudgeon

Why we must root ourselves in the real world

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimistby 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 Windby 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 Mitfordby 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 Shakespeareby 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 StoryNicholas Boggs

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