Heart of Semi-Darkness

A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors

Masters of Horror and Magic

The German folklorists who helped build a nation

For Want of Touch

The astonishing breadth of our passions

Imperiled Planet

The ecological havoc we’ve wrought

The Burning Earth: A History by Sunil Amrith

Ground Truth

A story of dirt, dollars, and death

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson

Insisting on the Positive

A popular historian’s philosophical musings

On Freedom by Timothy Snyder

A Stranger in the Seven Hills

A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City

Roman Year: A Memoir by André Aciman

Mortal Coils

We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable

Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death by Susana Monsó

Silent Partner

The union that may have made possible a writer’s late flourishing

A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson by Camille Peri

Schmaltz of Significance

How the first talkie treated the myth of the melting pot

Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer by Richard Bernstein

We, Not Me

A writer feels our pain

The Empathy Exams By Leslie Jamison

Beyond the Colonies

What else happened during the year of independence?

West of the Revolution By Claudio Saunt

Matters of Perception

Sometimes the truth lies more in what we perceive than what we think

Coming to Our Senses: Perceiving Complexity to Avoid Catastrophes By Vicki McCabe

The Bard of Suburbia

John Updike’s obsession with ordinary life made him the writer by whom we came to know ourselves

Updike By Adam Begley

19th Nervous Breakdown

The struggle to keep it together

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind By Scott Stossel

A Danger to Ourselves

Tough on other species, too

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History By Elizabeth Kolbert

Whores de Combat

In search of adventure and engagement

Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War By Amanda Vaill

The Fabulist

A literary critic’s ugly deception

The Double Life of Paul De Man By Evelyn Barish

Ready to Be Free

The end of the peculiar institution

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation By David Brion Davis

An Irascible Artist

Separating man from myth

Whistler: A Life for Art’s Sake By Daniel E. Sutherland

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