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
Purpose-Driven Life
Evolution does not rob life of meaning, but creates meaning. It also makes possible our own capacity for creativity.
By Brian Boyd Sunday, March 1, 2009
Second Chances, Social Forgiveness, and the Internet
We need the means, both technological and legal, to replace measures once woven into the fabric of communities
By Amitai Etzioni Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Potency of Breathless
At 50, Godard’s film still asks how something this bad can be so good
By Paula Marantz Cohen Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Man Who Shot the Man Who Shot Lincoln
The hatter Boston Corbett was celebrated as a hero for killing John Wilkes Booth. Fame and fortune did not follow, but madness did.
By Ernest B. Furgurson Sunday, March 1, 2009
Visions and Revisions
Writing On Writing Well and keeping it up-to-date for 35 years
By William Zinsser Sunday, March 1, 2009
Dawn of a Literary Friendship
In 1969 the writer Robert Phelps first wrote to the novelist James Salter. Here are the letters that forged a bond of two decades.
By John McIntyre Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Dowser Dilemma
How a town in Vermont found water it desperately needed and an explanation that was harder to swallow
By Kate Daloz Sunday, March 1, 2009
Putting Man Before Descartes
Human knowledge is personal and participant—placing us at the center of the universe
By John Lukacs Monday, December 1, 2008
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