Web Essays

The Very Elder Statesman

Konrad Adenauer transformed West Germany, doing his best work as an octogenarian

by Mark N. Grant | Friday, March 08, 2024

Iris as Pupil

Before this canonical English writer published novels, she was a student of French postwar philosophy

by Robert Zaretsky | Friday, March 01, 2024

Starving

The feelings of yearning and loss, when faced with an empty nest, can manifest in striking ways

by Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Friday, February 23, 2024

A State of Perpetual Unease

Sartre’s essay on French anti-Semitism cast the problem in existential terms

by Robert Zaretsky | Friday, December 15, 2023

Keeping House

Clinging to the rituals of home—even when longing to let them go

by Amanda Parrish Morgan | Friday, November 17, 2023

Philip Gove and “Our Word”

A lexicographer remembers the worst frigging part of the job

by David Skinner | Friday, November 10, 2023

Beethoven Underground

One ensemble bids farewell, with another just getting started

by Vivien Schweitzer | Thursday, November 02, 2023

The Forgotten Writers of the Shoah

What the work of women survivors can tell us about the horrors of life in the camps

by Jeanne Bonner | Friday, September 15, 2023

The Humanist in the Laboratory

A personal encounter with J. Robert Oppenheimer

by Mark N. Grant | Friday, August 25, 2023

The Decreationist

Simone Weil’s thoughts on the unmaking of the self

by Robert Zaretsky | Thursday, August 24, 2023
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