Autumn 2022

Cover Story

The Root Problem

Harvesting wild ginseng has sustained Appalachian communities for generations—so what will happen when there are no more plants to be found?

by Matthew Denton-Edmundson

Articles

An Artist of Our Social Age

Matthew Wong broke all the rules and flourished online, but he craved what the outsider typically eschews: commercial success

by Sierra Bellows

Rooms With a View

A childhood in Haifa—before Israel attained statehood and just after—helped form an architect’s vision of what an ideal home should be

by Moshe Safdie

A Monstrous Burden

The original Godzilla illuminates the plight of  Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, but what can it say about the present, about the violence endured by Asian Americans during Covid-19?

by Claire Stanford

The Degradation Drug

A medication prescribed for Parkinson’s and other diseases can transform a patient’s personality, unleashing heroic bouts of creativity or a torrent of shocking, even criminal behavior

by Carl Elliott

Averted Vision

Seeing the world anew in the aftermath of family tragedy, through the lenses of physics and theology

by Daniel O’Neill

Why We Are Failing to Make the Grade

Covid-19 has contributed to a crisis in America’s classrooms, but the problems predate the pandemic and are likely to outlast it

by Amanda Parrish Morgan

Departments

Book Essay

Freedom Tales

Freedom Tales

Long before the contentious school board fights of today, Lydia Maria Child tried to help America’s children understand their country’s racial transgressions

Lydia Moland
Dissident Lit

Dissident Lit

Vladimir Nabokov and the novel that nourished the souls of a generation of would-be revolutionaries

Richard Roper

Book Reviews

To Hell and Back

To Hell and Back

An Italian master’s unlikely depictions of Dante’s dark vision

Graeme Wood
Power of the Peoples

Power of the Peoples

American history was shaped as much by Native Americans as by their colonizers

Andrew Graybill
Building Up and Breaking Down

Building Up and Breaking Down

What happens when the structures we erect plunge us into despair?

Amanda Kolson Hurley
Jena-Gadda-Da-Vida

Jena-Gadda-Da-Vida

The brief flowering of an intellectual mecca in 1790s Germany

Steven G. Kellman
The Ephemeral Art

The Ephemeral Art

How a Russian impresario revolutionized dance

Vivien Schweitzer
Zeal of the Convert

Zeal of the Convert

A new biography charts a Peruvian seeker’s spiritual quest

Randy Rosenthal