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When I first began to read Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, I had high expectations. An attractive, colorful cover... Read More

I’ve known Deana Burke for almost five years now. First, as part of Boys Club (former guests of Tasteland) and then as a partner on our... Read More

California: Perhaps you’ve heard of it? It is the edge of the continent, it is the apocalypse state, and it is the subject of many... Read More

The Stamp Act of 1765 required American pamphlets and legal papers to carry the mark of the British government. We started a revolution over... Read More

In anticipation of the publication of my novella, American Moon, I’ve been thinking a lot about the form. Novellas are tiny in the... Read More

A truly intimate novel alters your pulse. Your blood slows to match the cadence of the sentences, speeds up again with each shift in plot.... Read More

On August 13, professional tennis saw something it hadn’t in 23 years: two American men reached the final of a Masters 1000, the... Read More

The other day, while I was trying to enjoy myself on a short vacation in a beach town, the ethnographer in me could not help but notice a... Read More

A Wall Street Journal opinion piece from billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller went viral this week—but not because of... Read More

The Gilded Age was convicted by its name before its history was ever written. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined that appellation in... Read More

“Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen have appeared as volcano experts, astronauts, thriller protagonists, podcast hosts, and academic... Read More

Back in the medieval era, there were 141 official holidays every year, according to scholar Pierre Émile Levasseur. That’s... Read More

In 2008, Barack Obama’s opponents in the Democratic primaries sniffed at his rhetoric. He was talking more about hope than his policy... Read More

Babies always sweep away the carefully laid plans of their parents. But our first child almost swept us away, too. In the summer of 1989,... Read More

“I love Poe!” a teenage girl exclaimed, racing toward a shelf of Edgar Allan Poe volumes. I was sitting in BookMarx, a small... Read More

The mountains spoke to Dolly Parton. Growing up in the deep green forests and dark hollers of East Tennessee, she listened to the rhythmic... Read More

The coroner said the manner of death was suicide, with “blunt or injury to the head, trunk and extremities.” The dead man’s... Read More

On January 8, 2025, as the Palisades fire consumed the neighborhoods perched on the hills above Los Angeles, a website called Polymarket... Read More

Humanity’s relationship with its mechanical helpers has always been a little bumpy. In a production of Lohengrin, the celebrated tenor... Read More

DAVID THOMSON, the British expat film historian with 45 books to his name, fears how movies have changed us. He has portrayed the... Read More

I hope she went in her wig. When I picture Dolly in her final moments, I want to believe she was wearing her tallest heels, with a full set... Read More

Greetings from the Biennale and dreamy, miraculous Venice, La Serenissima — and this time, they’re not kidding. This beauty,... Read More

Flames the height of Penicillium fungus. A wasp the volume of a speck of dust and its thimble-sized chalet made of cellophane. Destiny... Read More

William T. Vollmann’s subject is 9/11. Always is, always was. Even before the attacks happened, they were somehow his thing. An... Read More

Canceled graduate students, killer (literally) dissertations, an agitated cadre of revolutionary university landscapers, a Gen X professor... Read More

America lost one of its foremost historians in June when Gordon S. Wood was killed in an automobile accident near his home in Providence,... Read More

“I never want to repeat myself, and all my films have been on the money,” said Sir Ridley Scott, promoting his new film, The Dog... Read More

I appreciated Dolly Parton’s singing and acting, and especially her songwriting, but I was most impressed by her ability to carve out a... Read More

For decades, the free outdoor summer performances put on by Manhattan’s Public Theater have been a pillar of New York City’s... Read More

One of my best friends retired at the end of the school year.  We taught together for almost thirty years in the same social studies... Read More