Art must not serve might.
Why we keep showing up to book clubs — even when we haven't read the book 📚
Articles of Note
Ever wondered why every coffee shop looks the same? They are beholden to sad, algorithmically-driven design trends... more »
New Books
All hail Guy Davenport, who praised androgyny in the National Review and translated the Greeks as he munched fried bologna... more »
Essays & Opinions
With major elections looming, a moral panic has swept the globe: social media empowers populism. Is there anything to that?... more »
Articles of Note
Mansa Musa, a 14th-century West African monarch, possessed nearly half the gold known to exist in the Eastern Hemisphere... more »
New Books
To the extent that fatness is unfairly conflated with sickness, can a philosopher cure fatphobia? Kate Manne is trying ... more »
Essays & Opinions
What’s most difficult about Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is finding the time to read it. Ryan Ruby explains... more »
Articles of Note
A bruiser until the very end, Milton Friedmanknew the value of adopting the role of the underdog... more »
New Books
"Some books are so utterly bad that the case against them can be made based on almost any excerpt.” Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk is one of those books... more »
Essays & Opinions
The evolution of celebrity analysis: Madonna-ology was based on critical theory, Taylor Swift studies is concerned with teaching skills... more »
Articles of Note
The most surprising thing about a writing group at the CIA? No one is working on a spy novel... more »
New Books
Free will is an illusion, argues much of 21st-century science. The neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell begs to differ... more »
Essays & Opinions
Flaubert’s solitude. In 1851, he asked rhetorically: “Am I really to have a goal other than Art itself?”... more »
Articles of Note
The classical-music establishment’s challenge: How to foster the passionate devotion that allows an art form to survive... more »
New Books
The conglomeration of publishing explains some of our literary culture. But does it really explain all of it?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Once you enter Guy Davenport’s labyrinth of learning and imagination, you never get out. John Jeremiah Sullivan explains... more »
Articles of Note
Our punctuation, ourselves. What are we really talking about when we talk about exclamation points? ... more »
New Books
Virginia Woolf likened her to a “giant cucumber” with “the freakishness of an elf” — but does Margaret Cavendish deserve a closer look?... more »
Essays & Opinions
“No one can really believe in an apology until after it happens,” says Agnes Callard. “That’s the telltale mark of a miracle”... more »
Articles of Note
The first influencer, Beau Brummell, exuded “calculated nonchalance.” He was a harbinger of our celebrity culture... more »
New Books
Katherine Mansfield flirted with the Bloomsbury set at their parties — then plotted how to crush them... more »
Essays & Opinions
“Critique is not against reason; it is the very practice of reason.” Peter Gordon lays to rest some misconceptions of critical theory... more »
Articles of Note
Academic dishonesty, improper attribution, citational errors — why are professors so wary of invoking “plagiarism” in the case of Claudine Gay?... more »
New Books
“Although the concept of equality may seem intuitive, it is surprisingly difficult to pin down with any precision”... more »
Essays & Opinions
Tom Wolfe was less an inventive journalist or mediocre novelist − though he was both – than a grand theorist of American life... more »
Articles of Note
Does the afterlife exist? Yes, thought Kurt Gödel. Where else could humans fulfill their potential?... more »
New Books
Can a poet with no experience of combat or trenches capture the reality of a frontline soldier in WWI?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Planning to give up alcohol, smoking, or chocolate? Behind such self-sacrifice lies the despair of just wanting to give up... more »
Articles of Note
The medical-mystery genre has a familiar arc, usually punctuated by a revelatory “aha” moment. Not for Tom Scocca... more »
New Books
Ostriches beheaded, horses made into consuls. Embellishing the scandalous tales of Roman Emperors doesn’t make them useless... more »
Essays & Opinions
Samuel Moyn laments liberalism’s lack of an aspiration to perfection. But that never was a liberal tenet, and shouldn’t be... more »
Articles of Note
The first book of photography? British Algae, a binding of hundreds of cyanotypes compiled by an amateur botanist... more »
New Books
Jill Lepore: “The internet is an astonishing product of human ingenuity and an incredible archive. But … it has not realized the promise of democratization”... more »
Essays & Opinions
Amid calls to “decolonize” everything from hipsters to universities, one wonders: Where did this jargonized swagger originate?... more »
Articles of Note
Confessions of a bookseller. The essential problem with how we talk about the job – and it is a job – is preciosity... more »
New Books
The way to get ahead in economics, Robert Solow quipped, is to provide a “brilliant argument in favor of an absurd conclusion.” Has anything changed?... more »
Essays & Opinions
“The abandonment of ornament has levied a heavy toll on the practice of architecture, tantamount to misplaci