The Unjolly Green Giant
How C. F. Seabrook became the Lear of the vegetable fields
By Anne Matthews Monday, June 9, 2025
The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by John Seabrook
A Portrait of the Scholar
The life of Ireland’s towering literary figure became a work of art in its own right
By Michael O'Donnell Monday, June 2, 2025
Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker by Zachary Leader
The Rascal of Pont-Aven
Reassessing a renowned painter’s troubling life
By Hannah Stamler Monday, June 2, 2025
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux
Sticking With It
A sobering chronicle of our toxic times
By Juli Berwald Monday, June 2, 2025
They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals by Mariah Blake
Unbuilding the Mystery
What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common?
By Ilan Stavans Monday, June 2, 2025
Shamanism: The Timeless Religion by Manvir Singh
A Blast of a Time
The scientific underpinnings of Armageddon
By Jeffrey Lewis Monday, June 2, 2025
Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age by Frank Close
Farmed Out
The uncertain future of the nation’s heartland
By Donald Worster Monday, June 2, 2025
Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie by Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty
Streams of Consciousness
A writer’s intrepid exploration of troubled waters
By Anne Matthews Monday, June 2, 2025
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
An Enigma at the Center
The story of the American West in one photograph
By Alix Christie Thursday, May 22, 2025
The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West by Martha S. Sandweiss
Doing Nothing Is Everything
An areligious writer finds peace in a Benedictine monastery
By Costică Brădăţan Thursday, April 10, 2025
Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer
Enlightenment Lite
By Sudip Bose Saturday, March 1, 2008
A Blue Hand: The Beats in India By Deborah Baker
The Work of Death
How the Civil War changed forever Americans’ relationship with mortality
By Ernest B. Furgurson Saturday, December 1, 2007
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War By Drew Gilpin Faust
Subjectivity Is All
Using a lifetime of colorful examples to define the undefinable
By Robert Campbell Saturday, December 1, 2007
Modernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond By Peter Gay
The Casserole Inquisition
Chronicles from America’s culinary transformation
By Sandra M. Gilbert Saturday, December 1, 2007
The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food By Judith Jones
Wry Eye on the Bard
Sorting through the little we know about the best we’ve got
By John F. Andrews Saturday, December 1, 2007
Shakespeare: The World as Stage By Bill Bryson
Latin’s Eminent Career
Is the language of empire, the church, scholarship, and Europe nearing retirement?
By A. E. Stallings Saturday, December 1, 2007
Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin By Nicholas Ostler
A Long Walk in the New World
Of 300 Spaniards sent to settle Florida, only four survived
By Robert Wilson Saturday, December 1, 2007
A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca By Andrés Reséndez
The Genius and Her Sanctuary
Pivotal moments in the pairing of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
By Catharine R. Stimpson Saturday, September 1, 2007
Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice By Janet Malcolm
Atonality and Beyond
The century when composers and audiences parted company
By Sudip Bose Saturday, September 1, 2007
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century By Alex Ross, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Early End of Consensus
Bitter partisanship began soon after George Washington left the scene
By Jill Ogline Saturday, September 1, 2007
A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign By Edward J. Larson
