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William Wordsworth wrote the following of a bust of Isaac Newton that is still on display at the University of Cambridge: And from my... Read More

Philadelphia, 2019. An Uber is hauling me to the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and I ask the driver to name the best parts of... Read More

June 12, 2026 Our shop is in an old service station in a charming alpine town nestled within Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. Here’s the... Read More

Once, at a cocktail party, I had an encounter—calling it a conversation is a stretch—with a creative director of a middlingly... Read More

A professional slight kicks off Colson Whitehead’s third crime caper. Harlem merchant Ray Carney has just wrapped up an interview with... Read More

I have briefly and shallowly encountered Patrick Deneen’s ideas on a couple separate occasions while at Colgate, so I don’t know... Read More

James Ellroy is the author of, among other works, the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s a... Read More

The way we view complex, occasionally sinister, culture-defining institutions is largely shaped by one man: Aaron Sorkin. A Few Good Men (the... Read More

In late December, Stripe CEO and tech billionaire Patrick Collison and libertarian economist Tyler Cowen published a one-page website with... Read More

A spectre haunted this summer’s football World Cup — the spectre of Pep Guardiola. The Catalan coach, who finished as manager of... Read More

I’ve never not worked, in addition to writing. My books are not a job because no one needs them; their superfluousness is essential to... Read More

Is New York Times v. Sullivan, the case in which the Supreme Court sharply limited libel suits by public officials—a group later... Read More

My name is Noelle, and I'm a fan of the world's largest operating steam locomotive. I used to think this was a unique fact about me. But... Read More

August is supposed to be fully clear of Pride month, according to the calendar. But when I popped by a popular harvest festival in my... Read More

Most pitches I now receive are clearly leeched from large language models (LLM). About once a week I come across an article in a magazine, or... Read More

What is the state of American literature today? This loaded question never has an easy answer, and invariably the debate grows tedious,... Read More

Society is running out of babies, and no one can agree on why. Most people around the world, including Americans, live in a country where... Read More

In his breakout 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain recounts his early years as a cook... Read More

At undisclosed locations, in nondescript warehouses, vast troves of print books are scheduled for destruction. Each one awaits its bindings... Read More

“I’m actually not a fucking cook, I’m a writer,” Dominic Sessa says in the trailer for Tony, the new A24 movie about... Read More

I’m at Butterworth’s. An upscale restaurant popular among Washington’s right-wing elite; where Steve Bannon, Marco Rubio,... Read More

If you have ever tried to juggle, perhaps with those red Klutz Book fabric cubes full of beans, or with soggy tangerines, or with old tennis... Read More

It’s a rare sunny day where Jenna Ortega is. There’s not a cloud in the sky, and a gentle wind rustles the leafy branches over... Read More

In Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, an earnest young woman heads to Brown to study literature. Once there, she finds that novels... Read More

With almost every novel I read, I go through the same arc. At first the novel bores me. Then, suddenly, it becomes the most interesting thing... Read More

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has returned Homer’s epic to the center of popular culture, a feat that must be welcomed. Many... Read More

Baseball is America’s pastime. Football is its present tense, an obvious metaphor for war. Soccer is the egalitarian future. Meanwhile,... Read More

Open any parenting book from the past fifty years, and you will find a section about technology that starts something like this:... Read More

Two people are married. A few days later, the husband leaves for Quantico Marine Corps base. It is October, 1917—World War I. The... Read More