
Articles
Last Rites and Comic Flights
A funeral in a 1984 Japanese film offers moments of slapstick amid the solemnity
by Pico Iyer
Polish Lessons
Four decades ago, a young American found himself in Warsaw during turbulent, extraordinary times
by Thomas Swick
A Remembrance of Places Both Empty and Full
The divine, stark photographs of Robert Adams
by Megan Craig
It Happened One Day in June
Why Ulysses is as vital as ever— compelling, complex, and direct
by Robert J. Seidman
For the Joy of Joyce
Abandon the notion of high-minded seriousness and simply enter into the novel’s flow
by Amit Chaudhuri
The Bomb Next Door
Eighty years into the atomic age, U.S. nuclear power reactors have produced several million tons of radioactive waste—and we still have no idea how to dispose of it
by Thomas A. Bass
The Lions and the San
How could a people survive for thousands of years with so many predators in their midst?
by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Departments
Editor's Note
Tuning Up
Strange Bedfellows
Commonplace Book
Book Essay
Book Reviews

Morals, Meaning, and Nonsense
Ethical inquiry requires lived experience, not just logical examination
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Different People, Different Stories
On the complexities of lumping psychiatric patients into categories
Kathryn Tabb

What a Long, Strange Trip It Was
The explosive writer who created worlds alien and mundane
Madison Smartt Bell

A Whale of a Story
The parallel lives of Moby-Dick’s creator and the historian who rescued him from obscurity
Steven G. Kellman

California Scheming
Has one of the 20th century’s greatest unsolved crimes finally been cracked?