Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumous “Nobody’s Girl” doesn’t break political news, but might break your heart.
Zadie Smith Ponders The Point Of Essay-Writing
The relationships between writers and publisherscan be as long-lasting and as complicated as any marriage. Consider Gustave Flaubert and Michel Lévy... more »
New Books
Rambling man. Peter Matthiessen travelled to places most writers would never dare to go. What was he running from — or to?... more »
Essays & Opinions
More than 300 years after the reading revolution ushered in a new era of human knowledge, books are dying. The result: We're dumber, less creative, and less free ... more »
Articles of Note
Facing a likely ban at home, the first Slovak novelwas approved by royal censors in Vienna and published by a German printer... more »
New Books
Sylvia Plath and the "slicks." Her apprenticeship was shaped by a determination — and the financial need — to appear in women's magazines... more »
Essays & Opinions
The “idiot savant” was a rare curio — genius in one context, helpless in others. The discourse has evolved, but the fascination remains... more »
Articles of Note
Starbucks never changes, but rivers dry up and democracies collapse. The world we inhabit would be utterly bizarre to our agrarian ancestors... more »
New Books
James Schuyler didn't sound like other mad poets of his era. His style wasn't frenetic. But that doesn't mean madness didn't alter his sensibility... more »
Essays & Opinions
A new emphasis on sobriety and moderation renders foreign F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “alcoholic mist” and “lush and liquid garden parties”... more »
Articles of Note
Who will win this year’s Nobel Prize in literature? Bookmakers are favoring Can Xue and László Krasznahorkai... more »
New Books
Before he was a bearded celebrity, a Great Man, young Tennyson was gauche, beautiful, ringed by tobacco smoke, and far more interesting... more »
Essays & Opinions
With CRISPR, it turns out that playing God is neither difficult nor expensive. But should we harness this incredible technology?... more »
Articles of Note
An unprecedented grand tour of bibliophilic crime: 170 rare Russian books, valued at more than $3 million, gone... more »
New Books
Goethe’s philosophical coordinates came initially from Rousseau and Spinoza, two thinkers who appealed to and fortified his own disposition... more »
Essays & Opinions
Ann Goldstein and the art of translation: "The goal is to make a writer sound as much like him or herself as possible. Not like you"... more »
Articles of Note
The book business may be centered in New York, but when it comes to advances for debut authors, the attitude is pure Las Vegas... more »
New Books
In 1486, Giovanni Pico was young, handsome, rich, and on his way to Rome to dazzle theologians and the Pope. It didn’t go well... more »
Essays & Opinions
For a decade, Francis Fukuyama has been trying to explain the rise of global populism. Now he has an answer... more »
Articles of Note
One of Kafka’s great themes is paradox. Here’s one: His work defies translation, yet it has attracted very ambitious, talented translators ... more »
New Books
Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber says academia must listen to its critics. So why isn’t he taking his own advice?... more »
Essays & Opinions
While many of Gertrude Stein’s books are modern classics, some are ignored as too avant-garde. It’s time to rediscover them... more »
Articles of Note
The dodo, the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger: One company believes it can bring them back, making animal extinction a thing of the past... more »
New Books
The history of vanilla — the world’s favorite flavor — is rife with counterfeiting, pilfering, piracy, smuggling, and account fraud... more »
Essays & Opinions
In 1956, Gore Vidal declared: “I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag”... more »
Articles of Note
Rachel Ruysch’s reputation once rivalled Rembrant’s. Now, due to snobbery and sexism, her paintings are compared with wallpaper... more »
New Books
An instant classic that has endured for seven centuries, the history of the reception of Dante’s Divine Comedy is a history of Western taste... more »
Essays & Opinions
Many writers find writing agonizing. Few have expressed that feeling as vividly as Cynthia Ozick... more »
Articles of Note
Biographers have been likened to fiction writers and professional burglars. Richard Holmes takes a different view... more »
New Books
Know your meme. In the early 2000s, technology, art, and amateurism combined to reach such cultural achievements as LOLcats... more »
Essays & Opinions
Mary Carleton, the “German Princess,” charged with bigamy and theft, was a sensation in 1660s London. More than 500 people visited her in jail... more »