Articles of Note

Scott Joplin was obsessed with fashioning ragtime as high art. He failed, and his life lingers only in factoids, fragments, snapshots, and grainy recordings... more »

New Books

Frederick Law Olmsted created a profession - landscape architecture - and stumbled onto an ironic truth: It takes a lot of artifice to create “natural” scenery... more »

Essays & Opinions

Self-improvement through shocks. Electricity is central to our understanding of religion, philosophy, and love. Ever since the Victorians, we've made ourselves electrical ... more »