Conjurer of Worlds

The writer who made fantasy history

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

Hold the Salt

Reconsidering an ancient city’s bad reputation

Carthage: A New History by Eve MacDonald

Scientists in Dreamland

What might our nightly visions mean?

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

The Minotaur’s Muses

The romantic cruelty of a brilliant artist

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

Compassionate Curmudgeon

Why we must root ourselves in the real world

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

The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind by 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 Mitford by 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 Shakespeare by 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 Story Nicholas Boggs

A Blast of a Time

The scientific underpinnings of Armageddon

Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Ageby Frank Close

A Portrait of the Scholar

The life of Ireland’s towering literary figure became a work of art in its own right

Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Makerby Zachary Leader

The Unjolly Green Giant

How C. F.  Seabrook became the Lear of the vegetable fields

The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynastyby John Seabrook

The Rascal of Pont-Aven

Reassessing a renowned painter’s troubling life

Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguinby Sue Prideaux

Unbuilding the Mystery

What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common?

Shamanism: The Timeless Religionby Manvir Singh

Farmed Out

The uncertain future of the nation’s heartland

Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairieby Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty

An Enigma at the Center

The story of the American West in one photograph

The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American Westby Martha S. Sandweiss

Doing Nothing Is Everything

An areligious writer finds peace in a Benedictine monastery

Aflame: Learning from Silenceby Pico Iyer

Splitting Our Sides

A new biography of a comedy pioneer

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Liveby Susan Morrison

Song for the Earth

Finding a message for today in the music of Gustav Mahler

● NEWSLETTER

Please enter a valid email address
That address is already in use
The security code entered was incorrect
Thanks for signing up