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

“The Horses” by Edwin Muir

Poems read aloud, beautifully

The Snow Maiden

Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice

Ho Ho Horror

Why not make this Christmas a little darker?

A Story for Christmas

Nabokov Lives On

Why his unfinished novel, Laura, deserved to be published; what’s left in the voluminous archive of his unpublished work

They Get to Me

A young psycholinguist confesses her strong attraction to pronouns

When the Light Goes On

How a great teacher can bring a receptive mind to life

To Die of Having Lived

A neurological surgeon reflects on what patients and their families should and should not do when the end draws near

Truth and Consequences

In the Whitewater investigation, the biggest loser was the legal profession

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr By Ken Gormley

The Imbalance of Power

How the Manhattan Project gave birth to the imperial presidency

Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State By Garry Wills

The Lovable Leviathan

Whales hold a special place in our imagination, but their situation is dire

The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea By Philip Hoare

A Long, Cold Road to Paris

The 2,000-mile, 40-day journey of future first lady Louisa Catherine Adams

Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon By Michael O’Brien

The Debacle Before the Disaster

At Dien Bien Phu, the French got a lesson the U.S. would take two decades to learn

Valley of Death: The Tragedy of Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War By Ted Morgan

In the Shadow of Genocide

Impressions of a Turkish town that was once in Armenia

Rebel Land: Unravelling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town By Christopher de Bellaigue

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