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

Measure by Measure

A Mexican Mosaic

Carlos Chávez’s Indian Symphony

View from Rue Saint-Georges

The Best and Worst of Times

A weekend trip exposes France’s contradictions

Black and white "walk" sign

Impromptu

Black and white photograph of a bicycle leaning on the ground

Pessimists and Progress

Lessons from skeptics throughout history

Portrait of the Artist

Dawn Holder

End of the Anthropocene

Asturias Days

Getting Smart

Smarty Pants Podcast

The Wine-Merchant’s Son’s Tale

The first biography of Geoffrey Chaucer in a generation explores the places that inspired the English poet

View from Rue Saint-Georges

Mornings of Stillness and Wonder

How my son is helping me to rediscover the City of Lights

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