SPOTLIGHT

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

By Stephanie Bastek Friday, January 17, 2025

SPOTLIGHT

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

By Stephanie Bastek Friday, January 17, 2025

Asturias Days

Canto a los Días Huidos

Read Me a Poem

“The Hard Question” by W. H. Auden

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Men wearing masks to protect from COVID-19
COVID-19: A Primer

How to Think About the Coronavirus

Whether we will collectively move away from fears that make us subservient and move, or inch, toward a more interconnectedly humane world—this, as far as I can tell, remains up to us

Portrait of the Artist

Michelle Kohler

The Big Plan

Smarty Pants Podcast

All Your Friends Are Listening to This Podcast

How we can combine peer pressure and public policy to make the world a better place

Still from The Time of Our Lives
Web Essays

Souvenirs of War

Remembering The Best Years of Our Lives

Asturias Days

Milk and Butter

Operating room
Shelf Life

Dispatches From the Operating Room

An excerpt from The Invention of Surgery

Next Line, Please

Above the River of Your Longing

Two new prompts

Asturias Days

Casa Gorín

Read Me a Poem

“The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Book Reviews

Island Royalty

A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

Article

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

Asturias Days

Birthday Boy

Read Me a Poem

“The Horses” by Ted Hughes

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Portrait of the Artist

Amy Wetsch

Life, magnified

Article

The Weight of a Stone

Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

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Old Christ Church in Alexandria. Virginia, attended by General Robert E. Lee in his youth and pictured here in 1911 (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/Wikimedia Commons)
Book Reviews

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

Article

The Fair Fields
loading

Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil

Poetry

The Art of Tuning In

Celebrating 20 years of poetry in the Scholar

Commonplace Book

Winter 2025