New Books

How best to tell the story of philosophy? Instead of moving from one peak to another, wander the fertile valleys in between... more ?

Time to read and think and, for Wordsworth, ply his skills with the spade. Why were the Quantock Hills so inspiring to Romantic poets?... more ?

The rise of Pushkinography. Academics have flocked to the author, at the rate of three books published per day. Is there anything new to say?... more ?

The first appearance of the word Orwellian? Mary McCarthy used it to describe the fashion magazine Flair... more ?

The Regency years in Britain — 1811-1820 — involved more than spotlessly dressed dandies, lascivious rakes, and Elizabeth Bennet look-alikes... more ?

E.P. Thompson suffered an endless series of heroic defeats but refused grubby compromises and went down guns blazing... more ?

John Williams put a lot of himself into his most famous protagonist, William Stoner, a lackluster professor and difficult man... more ?

Peacock tongue and fried dormice, brain-stuffed sausages, caviar-stuffed crayfish, liters of wine poured by naked waiters: The Romans took gluttony seriously... more ?

Art criticism is art. It makes meaning out of the seemingly indecipherable, elucidating existential stakes. No one does this better than Peter Schjeldahl... more ?

Step aside, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Mill. Meet the oddballs, underdogs, and outcasts of British philosophy... more ?

The dissents of Wendell Berry. His dislikes include weather forecasts, unsmelly bathrooms, ballroom dancing, and the moon landing... more ?

In the Western tradition, what’s the most powerful and persuasive construct of the human imagination? It’s the idea of hell... more ?

The history of psychiatry is the history of our beliefs about our own minds. Breakthrough and disappointment, dogmas and counter-dogmas... more ?

It cannot be the fate of the book to become tweetlike. The book must stand above. A case study in what happens when it doesn't... more ?

How Islam shaped Western thought. The relationship led to a flowering of political philosophy, thought experiment, and polemic... more ?

As Oliver Sacks wrote, between mania and depression lies “a narrow ridge of normality.” Despite his best efforts, he sometimes slipped off that ridge... more ?

In the last decades of the 19th century, séances abounded, and austere sects speculated about geology. Darwin’s world was awash with spiritualized science... more ?

“Tonight I have achieved a fresh perspective on myself. I now understand my sexuality." Foucault on LSD... more ?

The problem with eternity: it is undesirable and incoherent; it kills meaning and collapses value. Can this realization be liberating?... more ?

Being Einstein meant people asking your opinion even about stupid things. "Why is it that no one understands me and everyone likes me?"... Allen Ginsberg. "When do I get the manuscript?" Thus began the effort to publish Howl, a landmark case of attempted censorship... more ?

When political failure leads to intellectual success. “Losers,” said Eric Hobsbawm, “make the best historians.” He was an embodiment of that principle... more ?

Reading Catcher in the Rye in Moscow. For Soviet audiences, imbibing Western culture — and misinterpreting it — was an expression of a freedom... more ?

For Samuel Johnson, the value of sociability was a life lesson. "I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance"... more ?

In 1940, thousands of Polish officers, writers, and artists were shot. The painter Józef Czapski survived to contemplate a question: Why him?... more ?

Liberty, morality, exceptionalism, xenophobia, oppression — Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen makes the case that American history is intellectual history... more ?

You may have heard that Richard Holbrooke was a monstrous egotist. "It’s true," writes his biographer. "It’s even worse than you’ve heard. He lets us ogle ambition in the nude”... more ?

The afterlives of philosophers. Nietzsche’s reputation fell almost immediately into disrepute; Kierkegaard, on the other hand, became an inspiration for “mindfulness.” Why?... more ?

In 1958 a curious academic impostor entered Hugh Trevor-Roper’s life. He found the man hilarious. Then he got fooled himself... more ?

In 1942, Ian Watt was instructed to defend Singapore Zoo from the Japanese. From the perspective of the animals, things did not go well... more ?

The tragedy of Martin Buber. He had hoped to provide European Jews with a sustaining connection to their tradition. Then most of them were killed... more ?

Shakespeare was many things, but not — inconveniently for a new book on the subject — a great classicist. As a drinking partner put it, the Bard had “small Latin and less Greek”... more ?

For Mary Norris, the comma queen, an early encounter with Greek mythology initiatied a lifelong infatuation with the magic of the ancient world... more ?

The Larkin wars. Tedious academics debate the humdrum details of the poet’s life, right down to his socks. Less examined: his genius... more ?

The business secrets of messianic socialists. From mop factories to property scams, communistic cults in America have been surprisingly entrepreneurial... more ?

Sexual solicitations, quid pro quos, and drunken brawls. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, professors thought that “free booty was part of their compensation package”... more ?

The brain on deadline. In the sports pages of the 1910s and ‘20s is a master course on what it means for a writer to improvise, compress, contrive... enlightenment necessarily accompanied by darker forces?... more ?

Why conducting matters. Whether the approach is mystical shaman, tyrant, or traffic cop, how to make sense of this most mysterious of musical professions?... more ?

Essays & Opinions

Against knowledge. It’s a crude, archaic concept, a relic of a bygone age, and it harms our real ways of thinking... more ?

It’s like Waze, but for social theory. Cass Sunstein wants government to help citizens navigate their lives. What if they don’t know where to go?... more ?

For Adrienne Rich, the great philosopher of secrets, the wish to keep and share them goes to the heart of intimacy, and why we value art... more ?

The click-swipe-and-rate economy has devastated journalism, art, literature, and entertainment. Now it's coming for the academy... more ?

When are writers polymaths, and when are they merely trespassing superficially into areas of knowledge they haven’t mastered? The lesson of Naomi Wolf... more ?

Art in an age of self-exposure. Gone is the withholding of secrets — novelists now put self-consciousness front and center... more ?

The idea that thinkers should distinguish private from public views is associated with Leo Strauss and the right. Now it's ascendant on the left... more ?

Should writers still make things up? With more fact-based fiction, purely fictional fiction faces a new reality... more ?

“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him," said Arthur Miller, who understood shame... more ?

She had Sartre for conversation; he, only drunks and gamblers. Inside the short-lived long-distance relationship of Nelson Algren and Simone de Beauvoir... more ?

Leslie Epstein has spent 40 years in the same wooden chair in the same lopsided room teaching fiction. The job is changing... more ?

Slaughterhouse Five at 50. Despite Vonnegut’s conviction that the book was a failure, it has endured surprisingly well... Lucian Freud’s brute nudity... more ?

The web is awash in tips from successful women writers — here’s what they’re reading, their Sunday routine. Does it help us understand them?... more ?

“A monster of arrogance and inconsideration.” Susan Sontag cut through received wisdom — an approach sorely missing today... more ?

New books reinterpret Homeric poems toward feminist ends. But in advancing a 21st-century politics, do they rob readers of ethical ambiguities?... more ?

One notable thing about Stefan Zweig’s writing is how varied the reactions to it have been — in his own time and our own... more ?

Make philosophy great again. The field has been reduced to bland Continental and analytic variants — a trend that must be reversed... more ?

Humor is often lost in translation, especially if it's being translated from German. Yes, the jokes are ponderous. But they're funny, too... more ?

The myth of advice. Successful people want to be helpful. But their advice sounds empty and canned — because it is... more ?

Today’s intellectual mode: “Learn an attitude and inquire no further.” Marilynne Robinson on why certain ideas, like economic “associationism,” have vanished... more ?

The cultural contradictions of Daniel Bell. He never could quite reconcile the Jewish conservative and the Yiddish radical within him... more ?

E.H. Carr and the fate of facts. “By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation”... more ?

Wit, mockery, joking, buffoonery: The oldest monastic rule we know of forbade joking. Laughter has long had a dangerously democratic quality... more ?

Adam Gopnik and the limits of liberalism. Is a defense of moderation and incrementalism really evidence of a refusal to look at reality?... more ?

Podcasts are the internet for our ears; they allow us to drift into a soothing, saturated state, distracting us from loneliness. Maybe loneliness is better... more ?

More than 7,000 pages of his letters, 8,000 pages of prose, 12,000 pages of Criterion, the magazine he edited. How much T.S. Eliot is too much T.S. Eliot?... more ?

Making ends meet as a book reviewer: $250 here and there, $1,000 from The New Republic. Jacob Silverman on the “foolish pursuit of an intellectually engaged life”... more ?

The history of cheerfulness. It evolved from a Greek virtue aligned with patience and justice into a self-helpy brand of American nonsense that borders on psychosis... more ?

The rise of the literary critic as pre-eminent cultural arbiter was a fluky aberration of the 20th century. The role was always going to be temporary... more ?

When ancient battles seem modern. The Epicureans were outraged when their school was bought as a retirement home for an amateur pornographer... more ?

John Berger occasionally went awry in evaluating individual artists (like Picasso), but his bullshit detection and skepticism of fashionable ideologies were nonpareil... custodians of humanistic culture isn’t just inaccurate; it is bad for universities themselves"... more ?

From Gordon Lish’s severity to Michael Pietsch’s maximalism, editors invisibly shape literary trends. That bodes ill as we enter publishing’s Conglomerate Era... more ?

Audiobooks and the ethic of efficiency. Increasingly, we don't read so much as listen. It’s an instinct born of a mania for optimizing every minute... more ?

Writer, weightlifter, defender of Oscar Wilde. A literary legacy seemed assured for the now-forgotten Frank Harris, who ranked his own genius with Shakespeare’s... more ?

Against podcasts. They are tedious and samey and sedative. Don’t waste your precious hours on them. A music critic makes his case... more ?

Influence and its discontents. The condition of being influenced is rarely a happy one. Shakespeare knew this. But will “social-media influencers” listen?... more ?

Problems at the painter’s guild. Rembrandt was insolvent and thus banned from the group. Only through some legal chicanery could he find work... more ?

Nearly 40 years ago, George W.S. Trow lamented what television had done to intellectual life. Imagine what he'd say about social media... more ?

Both Tolkien and Lewis experienced World War I’s Western Front. But it’s not clear how this formed either Middle Earth or Narnia... more ?

Lévi-Strauss at his peak. He was featured in Playboy and Elle. Even the French soccer team was reorganized along his principles... more ?

We admire law and order, embrace reasons and causes, seek predictability. Except when we don't. This tension is evident in modern aesthetics... more ?

Philosophy demands refutation and disputation, not kindness and empathy. Fighting, done right, is a form of inquiry... Colm Tóibín confronts cancer, chemo, and months on the sofa... more ?

To use words like “fugacious,” “crepuscular,” and “chthonic” is to invite accusations of pretentiousness. But that's better than language austerity... Hans Blumenberg? Long eclipsed, the late German thinker is having a moment. On metaphors, history, and lions... more ?

Putting sounds into words. "Writing about food is hard; writing about perfume must be even harder; but writing about music is difficult enough"... more ?

From life hacks to digital-detox schemes, the pressure to be more efficient is everywhere. Maybe it's time to try something else: Doing nothing... more ?

The problem with satire is not that it mocks and belittles; that's the point. The problem is that social media has rendered it both quaint and futile... more ?