ARTICLES
Thoreau’s Pencils 
How might a newly discovered connection to slavery change our understanding of an abolitionist hero and his writing?
By Augustine Sedgewick
Look Out!
Why did it take so long to protect spectators of America’s favorite pastime?
By Debra Spark
Teach the Conflicts
It’s natural—and right—to foster disagreement in the classroom
By Mark Edmundson
Thoreau’s Pencils
How might a newly discovered connection to slavery change our understanding of an abolitionist hero and his writing?
By Augustine Sedgewick
Look Out!
Why did it take so long to protect spectators of America’s favorite pastime?
By Debra Spark
Teach the Conflicts
It’s natural—and right—to foster disagreement in the classroom
By Mark Edmundson
DEPARTMENTS
editor's note
tuning up
Adventures With Jean
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
By Craig Nova
The Patron Subjects
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
By Jean Strouse
A Giant of a Man
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
By Eric Wills
Free
The knowledge of approaching death may allow some of us to experience time in new and liberating ways
By Philip Weinstein
poetry
anniversaries
commonplace book
Book essay
book reviews
Schmaltz of Significance
How the first talkie treated the myth of the melting pot