The Fair Fields

Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil

Just Yesterday

“The Frog Prince” by Stevie Smith

Poems read aloud, beautifully

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 Apart by 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 Union by Richard Carwardine

The Times They Are a-Changin’

In the music industry, pushing for gender equality is key

The End of Liberalism

What happens when public opinion is diminished and popular sentiment is aroused

A Life’s Work Gone to Seed

The lost cultivations of an often overlooked colonial scientist

American Edenby Victoria Johnson

The Song Spectrum

Scientists change their tune about animal vocalization

Kathy Hodge

New England by Train

Starbursts

On the poetry of Christian Wiman

Diamonds

The stones, shimmering and precious, connect a writer to her generous, enigmatic mother

Into the Quaking Mirror

An excerpt from our forthcoming web series, “How to Write a Novel”

Everything Was Radiant

A Soviet reactor’s meltdown and its far-reaching consequences

Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Serhii Plokhy

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