“The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” by Edward Lear

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Through a Lens Darkly

A photographer on how we represent conflict

The Virtuoso as Aristocrat

Jorge Bolet and one memorable night in 1974

Guessing Games

What you can tell about people—and what you can’t

Title Precedes Text

Too Much Future

How East German punks tore down the Berlin Wall

“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Fíjate!

State of Gliss

The art of Gloria Coates

Naked and Unafraid

A place where women, and men too, are comfortable in their skin

The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday

Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apartby Nicholas Carr

Burned

“The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Paige Ledom

Out of the ordinary

The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend

How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths

Old Christ Church in Alexandria. Virginia, attended by General Robert E. Lee in his youth and pictured here in 1911 (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/Wikimedia Commons)

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Unionby Richard Carwardine

Cudillero

“The Terrorist, He’s Watching” by Wislawa Szymborska

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

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