High Art and Low Chairs

Plus: a book’s journey from foreign lands to American shelves, and espionage

What Our Politicians Can’t Bring Themselves to Say

(And why the personal essay might help)

First Snow

Early delights of the season

The Real Nanny State

“I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You”

Ghostland

Read an excerpt from Colin Dickey’s history of America’s most haunted places

Ocean of Possibility

Pawns for Fascism

This piece from 1937 envisions the forces that make a demagogue like Trump possible

The Martyrdom Prayers

Enigmas and mysteries

The Root Cause

Padraic X. Scanlan tells the real history of the Irish Potato Famine

Consolidated Ruin

“After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Luis Alvaro Sahagún Nuño

Ancestral healing

Brown Wasps

“Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Tiger Mom

At a forest preserve in India, a writer sees the world anew and learns how to focus her son’s restless mind

A Midsummer Night’s Stream
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A Midsummer Night’s Stream

Learning to Be Social
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What might Rousseau teach us about how to live with others?

The Murderer as Everyman
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Arthur Fleck’s rise and fall

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