“The birthplace of Bach and Chopin filled with the snap of repeating rifles and the screams of ambulances. Villagers stood wide-eyed as the earth was strewn with torsos. As the battles of Verdun and the Somme depressingly demonstrated, the ‘civilized’ were slaughtering the ‘civilized’ with ‘primitive’ abandon.”—George Makari, “Thanatos Rising,”

Plus: Jonathan Weiner on the nature of memory, Amanda L. Andrei on translating from the Romanian, Richard Tillinghast on Charles Portis, and much more