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

Web Essays

On Hospitality

Perspectives on borders and border-crossing

View from Rue Saint-Georges

Goal!

The cathartic spectacle of sport

Portrait of the Artist

Maureen Chatfield

Breaking Away from the Horizon

Asturias Days

El Hambre

Measure by Measure

Death in Antarctica

Vaughan Williams’s Seventh Symphony

View from Rue Saint-Georges

Tabula Rasa

Thoughts on the birth of my son

Portrait of the Artist

Kathleen Vance

Traveling Landscapes

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

Read Me a Poem

“Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Portrait of the Artist

Katie Heller Saltoun

Tenderness and grit

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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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