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

cafe tables
Asturias Days

The Bucket

Read Me a Poem

“miss rosie” by Lucille Clifton

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Portrait of the Artist

Molly Springfield

A Trick of the Eye

Lenin
Web Essays

Revolutionary Chaos

The first-ever English translation of a 20th-century Russian masterpiece

dog
Asturias Days

The Writing on the Wall

Don Taylor and William Holden in Stalag 17
Web Essays

William Holden, Model Prisoner

How the actor defined the ideal, postwar man

Read Me a Poem

“I Knew a Woman” by Theodore Roethke

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Book
Web Essays

Why Book Reviewing Isn’t Going Anywhere

A researcher explores the future of a changing practice

Cape Reinga
Web Essays

The View From the End of the World

Wildfires, volcanoes, and the story of a mythical tree

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

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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

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Winter 2025