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

Domestic Insurrection

Rough Crossings: Britain, Slaves, and the American RevolutionBy Simon Schama / Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution By Joseph Glatthar and James Kirby Martin

Eclogues

Best Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer By Noel Perrin

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

An Israeli-Palestinian Peace Encounter

Under raining bombs, is healing conceivable?

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