Reading Like a Citizen

Civic education is resurgent in America, but why are the language arts missing from the curriculum?

Fractured Odysseus

The psychiatrist Jonathan Shay’s books on Homer are the key to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey

Gratitude Isn’t Everything

The revolutionary Patriots owed much to their forefathers, but their fight for universal rights embraced a wider mission

It All Comes Down to This

As the recent World Cup showed, the drama of a penalty shootout can at times be Shakespearean

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

Women in profile reading on the beach

The Great Summer Read

Why do we persist in this often futile literary quest?

The NASA You Never Hear About

No, the agency did not invent Tang or Velcro, but its discoveries have many applications in our day-to-day lives

Fighting the Secret War

An interview with Lynne Olson

March 10

February 27

February 16

February 3

The Years With Jake

My unlikely friendship with the dean of Washington lawyers

The Ritual of Renewal

Forget decluttering—I need to be surrounded by my library books

A Conversation With the Novelist

The Scholar‘s online book club meets Alice McDermott

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