On Kindness

Almost everybody wants to be thought of as kind, if only as a strategy

At 90

The Submerged

The Sondheim Way

Ambition, freedom, and the importance of innovation

The Art of Losing

The end of the war in Afghanistan shows the danger of our commitment to perpetual optimism

“Farewell” by Agha Shahid Ali

Poems read aloud, beautifully

The Capital of Self-Reliance

How a backwater became a philosophical powerhouse

The Transcendentalists and Their World by Robert A. Gross

Spinning a Good Yarn

Once upon a time, Clara Parkes adopted a 676-pound bale of wool and got an inside look at a disappearing industry

The Bird That Sang I Am

Poems about the place where we belong

Los Dedos

Above the River of Your Longing

Two new prompts

Casa Gorín

“The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Island Royalty

A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christopheby Marlene L. Daut

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

Birthday Boy

“The Horses” by Ted Hughes

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Amy Wetsch

Life, magnified

The Weight of a Stone

Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

New Year, Old Year

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