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

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

Avoiding Summer

The annual migration north

Unnatural Beings

Are machines becoming more like us, or are we becoming more like them?

“Homage to Auden”

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Intimate relationships shaped by the movement of history

Letters and Comments on My Writing

A selection

Milestones

Does New Orleans have anniversary fatigue?

So More Can Live

With a little money and basic care, more mothers and babies could survive.

“In my end is my beginning”

A Note on Stationery

And suddenly the memories revealed themselves

Shell-shocked

New Orleans serves history on the half shell

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