Bad Jew

Reckoning with a heritage as painfully distant as it is impossible to lose

The Changing of the Guard

This year’s US Open showed the world that tennis’s next generation is here

The Allure of the Enigmatic

“Mod” London takes center stage in Michelangelo Antonioni’s mind-blowing Blow-Up

The Affair Rekindled

Remembering the plight of Dreyfus and the effect it had on a young Marcel Proust

The Disappearing Modernists

Where did it all go wrong for so much music of the 20th century?

Famous Last Lines

How many do you know by heart?

Our Remedy

Quack Covid cures and New Age elixirs are just a 21st-century spin on 19th-century patent medicines

Once Upon Another Fraught Time …

The power of Yiddish children’s literature

The Dinner Party

Certain things shouldn’t be brought up at the dinner table, but in our fraught time, that’s nearly impossible

The Last Cigarette

Cinema’s most seductive prop

What He Stood For

How Angus Cameron, one of the most significant editors in the history of American publishing, responded to being targeted by the McCarthy blacklist

Who Is Blake Whiting?

The most astonishingly productive historian in recent times is someone you’ll never meet

The Importance of Being Idle

What Paul Lafargue taught us about work

Gilded Guilt

On Taylor Swift, Julian Fellowes, and the class conflicts that never die

The Popper Principle

Did Plato really espouse ideas that led eventually to totalitarianism?

It’s a Wonderful (Falling Apart) Life

In the disrepair of our everyday world are suggestions of life’s burdens and consolations

The Conspiracist Cotton Mather

The zealot who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials initially voiced restraint—what changed?

Baby Shoggoth Is Listening

Why are some writers tailoring their work for AI, and what does this mean for the future of writing and reading?

What Is an American Hero, Anyway?

Lists of great artists say more about the list-maker than the artist

My First Novel

A jean jacket, a muse, and a dream

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