Hold the Salt
Reconsidering an ancient city’s bad reputation
By Charles G. Salas Friday, January 23, 2026
Carthage: A New History by Eve MacDonald
Scientists in Dreamland
What might our nightly visions mean?
By Alice Vernon Thursday, January 15, 2026
Nightmare Obscura: A Dream Engineer's Guide Through the Sleeping Mind by Michelle Carr
Conjurer of Worlds
The writer who made fantasy history
By Michael O'Donnell Monday, December 1, 2025
The Tower and the Ruin: J. R. R. Tolkien's Creation by Michael D. C. Drout
The Minotaur’s Muses
The romantic cruelty of a brilliant artist
By Anne Matthews Monday, December 1, 2025
Hidden Portraits: Six Women Who Shaped Picasso's Life by Sue Roe
Compassionate Curmudgeon
Why we must root ourselves in the real world
By Robert Zaretsky Monday, December 1, 2025
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
By Juli Berwald Monday, December 1, 2025
The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind by Simon Winchester
Making Trouble
A British aristocrat’s leftist noblesse oblige
By Charles Trueheart Monday, December 1, 2025
Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford by Carla Kaplan
All His Biographers Merely Players
Retracing the Bard’s lost years
By Rachel Shteir Monday, December 1, 2025
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
By Steven G. Kellman Friday, November 14, 2025
A Stranger Everywhere
The inner world of one of America’s great warrior poets
By Nicholas Buccola Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Baldwin: A Love Story Nicholas Boggs
From Mandate to Nation State
How a failed Arab rebellion ensured Israel’s survival
By Randy Rosenthal Monday, March 6, 2023
Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict by Oren Kessler
Doors of Perception
The often unreliable ways we interpret reality
By Natalie Angier Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Where We Meet the World: The Story of the Sensesby Ashley Ward
Culture Shock
The hidden history of reverse colonization
By Ilan Stavans Wednesday, March 1, 2023
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europeby Caroline Dodds Pennock
Life at the Bottom
It’s not just the rich who victimize the poor
By Nancy Isenberg Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
The Center Cannot Hold
A kaleidoscopic journey through a divided country
By Elizabeth D. Samet Wednesday, March 1, 2023
The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil Warby Jeff Sharlet
Tales of Memory and Forgetting
What happens when we cease to be who we were?
By Scott Stossel Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain by Dasha Kiperby Dasha Kiper
Errant Thought
Can we keep the Enlightenment from dimming?
By Steven G. Kellman Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hopeby Sarah Bakewell
More Than Mere Words
The strange allure of the printed page
By Steven G. Kellman Thursday, January 26, 2023
Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers
Have Trowel, Will Travel
A new biography of 20th-century America’s greatest landscape architect
By Penelope Rowlands Monday, December 19, 2022
I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise: A Life of Bunny Mellonby Mac Griswold
Our Founding Contradiction
The entrenched dichotomy at the center of the national story



















