July 14, 2025 | The Battle of the Brows. In 1920s England, readers alienated by highbrow texts found refuge in a book club for the “Broadbrows”... more »
July 11, 2025 | Can college students read? Skeptics marshal damning anecdotes, but hard data is hard to come by... more »
July 10, 2025 | Can racial complexity be taught in a college classroom? Thomas Chatterton Williams finds resistance in students’ perception of “moral clarity”... more »
July 9, 2025 | Muriel Spark, obsessed with biography, authorized one of herself — which she came to describe as “slander” and “defamation”... more »
July 8, 2025 | Offering salaries from $200,000 to $300,000, The Atlantic has assembled a new “A-team” of writers... more »
July 7, 2025 | Fewer novels are being published by white male authors. And those that are published receive little acclaim. Why?... more »
July 4, 2025 | The tyranny of optimization. Why the push to become better, faster, stronger, smarter, generates so much despair ... more »
July 3, 2025 | People interested in advancing knowledge once paid little heed to universities. But something changed in Germany at the turn of the 19th century... more »
July 2, 2025 | "In the history of the advice column, one can glimpse the history of what can be said in public, and by whom"... more »
July 1, 2025 | It's never been easy to "make it" as a musician. These days it's easier to make music but harder than ever to earn a living from it... more »
June 30, 2025 | “Put all of digital media’s effects together and you have a recipe for reversing many of literacy’s impacts on consciousness and culture”... more »
June 27, 2025 | With research continuing, preliminary results suggest that the cognitive cost of relying on AI is real... more »
June 26, 2025 | Freelance writing, informal DJ sets, working retail — even seemingly successful musicians are having trouble making ends meet... more »
June 25, 2025 | In the 19th century, microphotography was a scientific marvel. In no field was it adopted more quickly than in espionage and erotica... more »
June 24, 2025 | In the ’60s and ’70s, the study of British royals was seen as elitist, trivial, even pointless. Today, however, royal studies are flourishing... more »
June 23, 2025 | Best sellers were once written by authors like Mary McCarthy and J.D. Salinger. Now they’re written by those like James Patterson. What changed?... more »
June 20, 2025 | Zelig with a paintbrush. Edward Burra was in Paris with Josephine Baker, in Mexico with Malcolm Lowry, and in Spain just before its civil war... more »
June 19, 2025 | In 1781 a semicolon appeared once every 90 words. Today it shows up once every 390 words. Is this progress?... more »
June 18, 2025 | What’s discussed at the Dull Men’s Club? Windshield wipers, coat hangers, and mailboxes, among other banalities... more »
June 17, 2025 | Get published for $20, co-author with a Nobel Prize-winner for $700: With academic paper mills, anything seems possible — for a fee... more »
June 16, 2025 | The fact checker's improvised dance: Intuition, calculation, and the seeking of truth... more »
June 13, 2025 | Patricia Highsmith asked one question when hiring an assistant: “Do you like Hemingway?” “No” was the only permitted response... more »
June 12, 2025 | Paleoanthropology, a notoriously cutthroat discipline, attracts "the most psychotic" scientists. Even so, the femur dispute stands out... more »
June 11, 2025 | The end of Hollywood. The movie business has moved to cities like Albuquerque and Atlanta. Even films set in L.A. are now shot elsewhere... more »
June 10, 2025 | What makes Thomas Mann’s liberal cosmopolitanism so compelling is that, temperamentally and philosophically, he remained a conservative... more »