Moral Exemptions

Should the law give special rights to the religious?

Canon Fodder

Works that Need Some Explanation

An Epitapher of Literary Ghosts

William Dean Howells secured the reputations of others, but not his own

Drinking in the Past

Six beverages that changed the world

Telltale Hearts

Sisyphus at Oxford

Just Looking

What Is It Good For?

How the American military went from defense to offense

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War By Andrew J. Bacevich

Battle of Anacostia

The bonus army and its unexpected legacy

The Bonus Army: An American Epic By Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen

Thoreau’s Landscape Within

How he came to know nature, and through it came to know himself

Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism By David M. Robinson

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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