Autumn 2020

Cover Story

Our Post-Privacy World

Total information awareness may make us feel safe, but will we regret living in a surveillance state?

by Thomas A. Bass

Articles

Slow Blues

On confronting the wonder and terror of nature

by Tamara Dean

Art After the Plague

How painters through the ages have responded to contagion, pestilence, and deadly epidemics

by Ingrid D. Rowland

Still Made for You and Me?

Our public lands are under attack as never before by the Trump Administration

by John D. Leshy

Teach What You Love

A modest proposal for professors of literature

by Mark Edmundson

Race and Public Health

The coronavirus reveals how this country fails to relieve suffering

by Philip Alcabes

The Gravity of the Situation

Popular physics books make science cheap, easy, and entertaining. The problem is, they often mislead.

by Jethro K. Lieberman

Departments

Book Essay

A Mind on Fire

A Mind on Fire

In his acclaimed trilogy of intellectual biographies, Robert D. Richardson sought to help us overcome the burden of the past

Sam Gee

Book Reviews

Admired and Abhorred

Admired and Abhorred

The German composer whose legacy continues to confound

Steven G. Kellman
Beneath the Powdered Wig

Beneath the Powdered Wig

Reinterpreting the life of our trendiest Founding Father

Nancy Isenberg
Varieties of Experience

Varieties of Experience

Culture rewires our brains and shapes how we think

T. M. Luhrmann
Bugging Out

Bugging Out

The buzzing, crawling creatures we would be lost without

Natalie Angier