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
Getting It All Wrong
The proponents of Theory and Cultural Critique could learn a thing or two from bioculture
By Brian Boyd Friday, September 1, 2006
Lincoln the Persuader
Seeking to get people behind his policies, he made himself the best writer for all our presidents
By Douglas L. Wilson Friday, September 1, 2006
The Man Who Loved Languages
A scholar with the ability and audacity to rebuild the Tower of Babel died a year ago, but his controversial project lives on
By Richard B. Woodward Friday, September 1, 2006
My Mother’s Body
Just remembering her is not enough; resurrecting her is the ultimate goal
By Mary Gordon Friday, September 1, 2006
Tomorrow Is Another Day
An Ethiopian student survives a brutal imprisonment by translating Gone with the Wind into his native tongue
By Carol Huang Friday, September 1, 2006
Saratoga Bill
He bet cautiously at the track, but elsewhere he was drawn to those with the odds stacked against them
By Zachary Sklar Friday, September 1, 2006
The Ordinariness of AIDS
Can a disease that tells us so much about ourselves ever be anything but extraordinary?
By Philip Alcabes Thursday, June 1, 2006
The Sack of Baghdad
The U.S. invasion of Iraq has turned cultural icons into loot and archaeological sites into ruins
By Susannah Rutherglen Thursday, June 1, 2006
● This week's archive pick
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