SPOTLIGHT

The Diagnostician of Despair

Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin

By Robert Zaretsky Thursday, December 19, 2024

SPOTLIGHT

The Diagnostician of Despair

Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin

By Robert Zaretsky Thursday, December 19, 2024

Asturias Days

Mañana

Measure by Measure

The Power of Musick

Handel, Dryden, and Alexander the Great

View from Rue Saint-Georges

A New Breed of Patriot

Sometimes love of country means defying her laws

Next Line, Please

The False Confession

Portrait of the Artist

linn meyers

Seeing Sound Waves

Read Me a Poem

“The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Asturias Days

Trastero

Smarty Pants Podcast

Black Birds of the Tower

There’s evermore to ravens than you think

Web Essays

March Madness

Why I Can’t Stand Little Women’s Jo March

Asturias Days

Such as It Is

Read Me a Poem

“Guests” by Celia Thaxter 

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Next Line, Please

“What a Strange Path”

Three new prompts

Smarty Pants Podcast

Kinship and Contradictions

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity

Tuning Up

Verde

Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew

Asturias Days

Cats and Dogs

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“Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright

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Portrait of the Artist

Katie Heller Saltoun

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Fiction

Magic Men

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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)
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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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