Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

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 Christophe by 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

“Burnt Norton” by T. S. Eliot

London: A Testament to Survival

England is a lesson on the longevity of our planet, the tenacity of our species, and our need, as human beings, to connect.

Who’s the Nerd Now?

How geek culture finally triumphed

Bird Dancer

You Can’t Go Home Again

American volunteers joined western allies in the fight to dismantle the Islamic State in Syria. What happened when they came back?

Admired and Abhorred

The German composer whose legacy continues to confound

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of MusicAlex Ross

A Mind on Fire

In his acclaimed trilogy of intellectual biographies, Robert D. Richardson sought to help us overcome the burden of the past

Beneath the Powdered Wig

Reinterpreting the life of our trendiest Founding Father

Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons From a Misunderstood Founder by Christian Parenti

Varieties of Experience

Culture rewires our brains and shapes how we think

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrichby Joseph Henrich

The Poet Who Painted

Max Jacob, who helped introduce Picasso to the French, was a talented artist in his own right

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