Dec. 12, 2024 | Kafka's dark humor is apparent in his weirdest, longest, and most underappreciated short story ... more »
Dec. 11, 2024 | Beatrix Potter wasn’t just a children’s book writer — she was a framer, sheep breeder, and conservationist... more »
Dec. 10, 2024 | 100 pages a day. No exceptions. That’s how much Matthew Walther reads. You're skeptical?... more »
Dec. 9, 2024 | Why read novels? To recognize our preoccupations and escape from them; to be intellectually engaged and emotionally devastated... more »
Dec. 6, 2024 | Roger Scruton became a conservative in Paris, but refined his thinking in the “bohemian blur” of 1970s Britain... more »
Dec. 5, 2024 | Whose Aristotle? Ideologues of all varieties claim him as their own, distorting and even falsifying his views... more »
Dec. 4, 2024 | The Simone Weil resurgence seeks to makes her “relatable” — by stripping away her eccentricity and religiosity... more »
Dec. 3, 2024 | “I’d go to see Las Meninas and it was very eerie to be there alone”: John Banville on the spookiness of the Prado after hours... more »
Dec. 2, 2024 | She rubbed shoulders with celebrities and art-world royalty. Her paintings sold for $200,000. Then, in a flash, Jamian Juliano-Villani was brought low... more »
Nov. 29, 2024 | Derek Parfit was odd. Very odd. Were they charming eccentricities? Psychological limitations? Or something more alarming?... more »
Nov. 28, 2024 | At the first Thanksgiving, turkey was very likely overshadowed by goose, duck, or even swan and passenger pigeon... more »
Nov. 27, 2024 | Nietzsche first landed in American bookstores in the 1890s. He’s maintained a unique hold on the American mind ever since ... more »
Nov. 26, 2024 | “An increasingly competitive spiritual marketplace.” Modernization spawned Mormonism, Caodaism, Rastafari, and other new alternative faiths... more »
Nov. 25, 2024 | To hone his prose style, Haruki Murakami wrote his first novel in Japanese, rewrote it in English, then translated it back to Japanese ... more »
Nov. 22, 2024 | Noel Parmentel Jr., “a man who attracted women by insulting them,” was Joan Didion’s first great love... more »
Nov. 21, 2024 | Jordan Peterson has wrestled with God and himself to confront the specter of nihilism, falling into the same pitfalls as Nietzsche ... more »
Nov. 20, 2024 | A drilling project at the moon's south pole has academics and activists wondering: Does outer space need environmentalism?... more »
Nov. 19, 2024 | For 10 years, academics have fruitlessly bent their expertise toward the goals of left-wing political activism... more »
Nov. 18, 2024 | The marketing of olive oil suggests artisanal traditions from the Mediterranean. The flavor is actually produced by heavy machinery... more »
Nov. 15, 2024 | Violet Powell, a first-class nitpicker, loved nothing more than picking at the writing of her husband, Anthony... more »
Nov. 14, 2024 | Sanora Babb had big talent and the worst luck. The wonder isn’t that she wrote so little, but that she managed to write anything at all... more »
Nov. 13, 2024 | The Soviet Union's Plant Institute stored seeds to safeguard against famine. Amid a famine in Leningrad, did scientists eat the seeds to save themselves?... more »
Nov. 12, 2024 | The Magic Mountain turns 100. Thomas Mann’s novel captured an era of humanism and nihilism — one that parallels our own... more »
Nov. 11, 2024 | Theater tickets and copies of Playbills are by definition ephemeral. But they also serve as a history – a record that’s vanishing... more »
Nov. 8, 2024 | The pedagogy of Paracelsus. The Renaissance physician thought little of canonical texts: “Not even a dog-killer can learn his trade from books”... more »