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

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

A Year of Sonnets

October: A Sonnet

Portrait of the Artist

Jeanne Lorenz

Evaporating Pigments

Smarty Pants Podcast

Threepenny Thriller

An 18th-century thief gets a 21st-century update

Asturias Days

Pickings

Read Me a Poem

“Poetry” by Marianne Moore

Listen to the inaugural entry in our new series of poems read aloud, beautifully

Measure by Measure

The Lonely Heath at Twilight

Gustav Holst, Thomas Hardy, and a musical portrait of a timeless place

Web Essays

Spring, 1988

Time does nothing to lessen the pain of sexual assault

View from Rue Saint-Georges

A Sad Story

Sometimes good faith and hard work are not rewarded

Next Line, Please

Let the Names Begin

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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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Celebrating 20 years of poetry in the Scholar

Commonplace Book

Winter 2025