Martha Foley’s Granddaughters
What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett
By Jay Neugeboren July 18, 2024
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
By Sandra Beasley July 11, 2024
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
By Witold Rybczynski July 4, 2024
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
By Pamela Haag June 20, 2024
The Widower’s Lament
After the death of the poet Wendy Barker, her grieving husband turns to the literature of loss
By Steven G. Kellman March 4, 2024
The World at the End of a Line
The grandson of one of American literature’s Lost Generation novelists reflects on his namesake’s love of the sea
By John Dos Passos Coggin April 13, 2023
The Goddess Complex
A set of revered stone deities was stolen from a temple in northwestern India; their story can tell us much about our current reckoning with antiquities trafficking
By Elizabeth Kadetsky March 2, 2023
Last Rites and Comic Flights
A funeral in a 1984 Japanese film offers moments of slapstick amid the solemnity
By Pico Iyer July 28, 2022
The Believer
When nobody would touch Joyce’s manuscript, Sylvia Beach stepped in
By Keri Walsh June 15, 2022
Making Sparks Fly
How occupational education can lead to a love of learning for its own sake
By Mike Rose Friday, June 3, 2011
In the Orbit of Copernicus
A discovery of the great astronomer’s bones, and their reburial in Poland
By Owen Gingerich Friday, June 3, 2011
Plunging to Earth
Once the sport of daredevils, skydiving now offers it existential thrills to grandmothers, pudgy geeks, and even the occasional college professor
By Robert Zaretsky Friday, June 3, 2011
Plucked from the Grave
The first female missionary to cross the Continental Divide came to a gruesome end partly caused by her own zeal. What can we learn from her?
By Debra Gwartney Friday, June 3, 2011
Civil Warfare in the Streets
After Fort Sumter, German immigrants in St. Louis flocked to the Union cause and in bloody confrontations overthrew the local secessionists
By Adam Goodheart Wednesday, March 2, 2011
How Longfellow Woke the Dead
When first published 150 years ago, his famous poem about Paul Revere was read as a bold statement of his opposition to slavery
By Jill Lepore Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Interview with a Neandertal
What I always wanted to ask our distant cousins about love and death and sorrow and dinner
By Priscilla Long Wednesday, March 2, 2011
‘I Tried to Stop the Bloody Thing’
In World War I, nearly as many British men refused the draft—20,000—as were killed on the Somme’s first day. Why were those who fought for peace forgotten?
By Adam Hochschild Wednesday, March 2, 2011
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