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
The View from 90
Even when those in my generation have reached a state of serenity, wisdom, and relative comfort, what we face can hardly be called the golden years
By Doris Grumbach Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Baseball’s Loss of Innocence
When the 1919 Black Sox scandal shattered Ring Lardner’s reverence for the game, the great sportswriter took a permanent walk
By Diana Goetsch Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Unauthorized, But Not Untrue
The real story of a biographer in a celebrity culture of public denials, media timidity, and legal threats
By Kitty Kelley Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Empathy and Other Mysteries
Neuroscientists are discovering things about the brain that answer questions philosophers have been asking for centuries
By Richard Restak Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Seduction
After years of favoring the endurance-test approach to teaching literature, a professor focuses on how to make books spark to life for her students
By Paula Marantz Cohen Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Passionate Encounter
A noted midcentury critic has much to say in his journal about his fellow writers and the literary world they shared
By Alfred Kazin Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Reassessing Rossellini
Restoration of Rome Open city, the director’s masterpiece, prompts a look at why he later retreated from the neorealism it introduced
By Joseph Luzzi Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Prozac for the Planet
Can geoengineering make the climate happy?
By Christopher Cokinos Wednesday, September 1, 2010
● This week's archive pick
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