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I grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, 10 minutes from frat row, a strip of filthy, dilapidated mansions long since demolished and bought by... Read More

Luke Burgis has written an interesting book exploring the tension between belonging and differentiation. This theme was beautifully... Read More

When I was a kid, my dad read to my brother and me almost every night before bed. Very early on, it was Dr. Seuss. Dad literally knew Yertle... Read More

The best horror movies invoke anxiety, a deep human emotion. “The Exorcist” and its countless imitators exploit our fear of... Read More

In spite of his six widely read novels, his two works of nonfiction (with their original contributions to the study of language and the human... Read More

“LET ME EXPLAIN to you how this university works.” The speaker was a world-famous Princeton historian; across the cafeteria... Read More

On January 18, 2021, as the first Trump administration entered its last days, the 1776 Commission published its final report. Convened in... Read More

Daylight saving time is here, which means the sun is setting earlier, the weather is cooling, and you have an extra hour to enjoy some brand... Read More

Hegel tells us that the great historical actors are made by chance: they emerge when the personal ambitions of some particular man align with... Read More

IN JUNE 1964, Peter Bogdanovich and his wife, all-purpose helpmate, and eventual creative partner, Polly Platt, left New York City and took a... Read More

Madeline Summerville and Joel Kotkin debate Carl Marrara and Kenin Spivak about the stakes of this week's midterm elections and the "mostly... Read More

Katie Kitamura’s Audition, a magic eye of a book, is a novel preoccupied with middles: a woman’s experience of middle age, the... Read More

THE HONGSHAN CULTURE existed in a Nebraska-size area of northeastern China from 4700 to 2900 BCE. Archaeologist Guo Dashun called Hongshan... Read More

Twenty years ago,  when the New Atheism was new, provocative books with puckish titles like Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great... Read More

Last year I began inhaling novels about scam artists, con men, grifters—an archetype that looms so large today, you almost forget... Read More

The photo project “Grievances: Notebooks of Anger and Hope” shines a light on the words and lives of citizens who put pen to... Read More

I don’t know how many years it has been since the word sumptuous has come to mind, but my head was absolutely ringing with it as I... Read More

I have been on the move. I turned from my desk and took four steps to reach a bookshelf behind me. Once there, I slid a row of poetry books,... Read More

There is a saying in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: “You can bomb a hospital, but not Bralima.” Short for Brasseries,... Read More

On the last day of May 2025, I submitted my resignation letter to what had long been my dream employer. It was not a decision I took lightly.... Read More

The protagonist of Walker Percy’s 1961 novel The Moviegoer finds solipsistic respite in the theater: In the evenings I usually watch... Read More

I often pass near my neighborhood an old rusty bridge. You wouldn’t think twice to look at a bridge like that. Usually, such bridges... Read More

For Arturo Sandoval, jazz represents a way of life, but the way it came into his life could only be described as an act of fate. The trumpet... Read More

Why, of all people, defend the dilettante? An amateur at best, a flighty rascal at worst: why take an interest in someone whose own interests... Read More

With the partial exception of the presidential campaigns that Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas waged in the early 20th century, socialism has... Read More

Gregory Clark, the economic historian behind A Farewell to Alms and The Son Also Rises, has released the final installment of his trilogy on... Read More

At the Brooklyn Nets’ home opener against the Charlotte Hornets last week, one longtime fan pointed out the strange dynamic inherent to... Read More

I WENT TO A BOOKSHOP in Montreal and saw that the bookseller had Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Life of M, open on the counter beside the... Read More

In 2005, Alain Badiou argued that in the second half of the 20th century, there was a “French philosophical moment” comparable to... Read More

In a thoughtful new book called The Future of Jokes, Robin Ince asks, “When the world is such a joke, how do you parody... Read More

Christopher Abbott has a secret. We’re sitting in the Bowery Hotel’s outdoor patio in Lower Manhattan, making small talk about... Read More

There are films that you seem to live inside. Ninety minutes and change of what transpires on the screen singes your mind’s eye and... Read More

Halloween, a holiday steeped in transatlantic cooperation, is upon us. A pagan celebration birthed in Britain some 2,000 years ago was... Read More

Harold Wright Cruse (1916–2005), my colleague at the University of Michigan for decades, may have been the most flamboyantly... Read More

America and the West are going through a civilizational crisis. The clearest sign of it here in the United States is the rapid rise of a... Read More

When the story of Karyann Parkinson—a Virginia mom convicted of child abuse for letting her five-year-old walk alone to a nearby... Read More