Henry Cowles finds much to appreciate in John Tresch’s new biography of Edgar Allan Poe. | Continue reading
Joe Stadolnik reviews Jennifer M. Rampling's history of alchemy, "The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300–1700." | Continue reading
From a movie set extra to a famous Red Scare crusader in Los Angeles. | Continue reading
George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Mann on militarism and civilization. | Continue reading
Ten Years of Cultural Vitality | Continue reading
Paul Kreitman reviews Timon Screech’s “Tokyo Before Tokyo” and Amy Stanley’s “Stranger in the Shogun’s City.” | Continue reading
A newly translated novel by a major Dutch author tackles the relationship between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. | Continue reading
Henry M. Cowles evaluates "The Knowledge Machine," the new book by Michael Strevens. | Continue reading
Rithika Ramamurthy reviews Anne Helen Petersen’s “Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.” | Continue reading
Britta Böhler has dramatized for us an important long weekend in Thomas Mann's life. | Continue reading
In a wide-ranging conversation, Sam Weller and Dana Gioia commemorate the centennial of Ray Bradbury’s birth. | Continue reading
Alex Pang thinks he should hate Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell’s book “The Innovation Delusion.” Instead, he wholeheartedly agrees with their main points. | Continue reading
“Communist Pigs” advances the swine history of Germany, taking readers to the era of authoritarian rule in the GDR. | Continue reading
Robert Diab on William Deresiewicz’s new book, “The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech.” | Continue reading
A rich and rewarding study of political leadership in the 18th and 19th centuries. | Continue reading
On the trail of bigfoot hunters and UFO enthusiasts. | Continue reading
On the inspirational lyricism of Camus’s essays. | Continue reading
A collection of scintillating interviews with a celebrated French cultural theorist. | Continue reading
An excerpt from “The Asset Economy,” a forthcoming book from Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, and Martijn Konings. | Continue reading
Gerald Russello looks into “How To Be Depressed,” the new book from George Scialabba. | Continue reading
A new book explores the ugly underside of the Italian Renaissance. | Continue reading
Do we need a single, coherent, overarching truth in order to live our lives? | Continue reading
Dave Mandl examines Tom Phillips’s book “Humans,” which details the many ways we’ve screwed up. | Continue reading
Ilya Vinitsky follows a spurious Dostoyevsky quote into the American house of the dead. | Continue reading
A new biography of early cinema’s first family, the Costellos. | Continue reading
Colin Marshall explores the allure of polyglotism and the perils of linguistic hegemony through “Lingo” and “Babel” by Gaston Dorren. | Continue reading
Samuel Loncar reviews D. W. Pasulka's new book, "American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology." | Continue reading
Philip Alcabes considers Mike Jay’s biography of the psychedelic drug mescaline. | Continue reading
Crispin Sartwell considers philosopher Robert Brandom’s long-awaited reinterpretation of Hegel’s “The Phenomenology of Spirit.” | Continue reading
A history of frontier theorizing leaves many questions blowing in the wind. | Continue reading
On the bleak tales of Leo Tolstoy's "The Lion and the Puppy: And Other Stories for Children." | Continue reading
How cash transfers became the default response to economic shocks. | Continue reading
“‘How Humans Learn’ is a splendid repository of ways to rethink how we teach college.” Ryan Boyd reviews Joshua R. Eyler’s new book. | Continue reading
Kathleen Rooney reviews John T. Irwin’s “The Poetry of Weldon Kees: Vanishing as Presence.” | Continue reading
Audra Wolfe shows how the banality of Einstein’s time in Prague is precisely the point of Michael Gordin’s new book, “Einstein in Bohemia.” | Continue reading
Costica Bradatan looks back at, and behind, the life and thought of Umberto Eco, who waged a long war against “dietrologia” (“behindology”). | Continue reading
Robert Zaretsky considers Albert Camus’s posthumous friendship with Simone Weil. | Continue reading
Art Beck is enchanted by “The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice,” a Greek epic translated by A. E. Stallings. | Continue reading
A new biography of Michael Hollingshead, the man who turned Timothy Leary on. | Continue reading
Akanksha Singh considers Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury’s “The Hungryalists: The Poets Who Sparked a Revolution.” | Continue reading
"Before we can throw bricks through windows, we need to be able to get out of bed." Mikkel Krause Frantzen on the politics of depression. | Continue reading
Tucker Coombe reviews "Leaving the Witness" and "Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church." | Continue reading
Historian of science Michael D. Gordin reviews his former lab partner’s new book on the fuzziness of the quantum world. | Continue reading