Sept. 13, 2019 | The latest whiz-bang invention from MIT’s Media Lab: a computer that can grow any food. Is this Theranos for plants?... more »
Sept. 12, 2019 | One night in 1954, after copious amounts of sherry, the quantum physicist Hugh Everett came up with the Many-Worlds theory. It quickly ruined his career... more »
Sept. 11, 2019 | Orwell on the run. Spies and collaborators were everywhere. What allowed him to escape Spain in 1937 was police incompetence... more »
Sept. 10, 2019 | How two erudite, polished, well-connected New York hustlers conspired to publish the most notorious book in the world and change the definition of obscenity forever... more »
Sept. 9, 2019 | Want to succeed at the mother of all tech incubators, Stanford University? Don’t sleep. Read René Girard (or at least pretend to). And brown-nose relentlessly... more »
Sept. 7, 2019 | Classical music is a high-water mark for culture. Being a classical musician, however, is a job — a crappy job... more »
Sept. 6, 2019 | Robin DiAngelo has been called “the new racial sheriff in town” — but what exactly does $165 for a day at her whiteness workshop buy?... more »
Sept. 5, 2019 | What killed Alexander the Great? Historical theories abound, but perhaps it was the bowls of wine, the drinking contests, and the 20 toasts... more »
Sept. 4, 2019 | What attracted scientists to Jeffrey Epstein — his money — is obvious. But was there more to it than that? A few clues can be found on a strange website... more »
Sept. 3, 2019 | For the Greeks, it was the poets who gave meaning to the god Eros. And none was more gifted than Sappho... more »
Sept. 2, 2019 | Georges Simenon wrote nearly 200 novels. Hitchcock telephoned one day and was told, "Sorry, he’s just started a novel." "I’ll wait,’ came the reply... more »
Aug. 31, 2019 | Anecdote huckster and faux intellectual, or a genius sharing novel insights? Malcolm Gladwell reaches a professional tipping point ... more »
Aug. 30, 2019 | Philip Larkin referred to his childhood as a “forgotten boredom.” Accompanied, however, by rage, fear, embarrassment, guilt, resentment, and shame... more »
Aug. 29, 2019 | Can books kill? They seemed to do just that during the “great book scare” of the 1890s — a mass panic over diseases spread by libraries... more »
Aug. 28, 2019 | Mary Kay Wilmers, editor of the LRB, having read more than a few reviews of novels, has thoughts about where critics go wrong — and right... more »
Aug. 27, 2019 | For Walter Benjamin, archives were no safe space. Historical work was inherently dangerous, requiring a “tiger’s leap into the past”... more »
Aug. 26, 2019 | We are moving into a “soulless future” as art, literature, and religion recede from the public square — or so frets Camille Paglia?... more »
Aug. 24, 2019 | Sartre and crabs. “After I took mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time.” For help he turned to Lacan... more »
Aug. 23, 2019 | Rudyard Kipling slowly became “morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.” Was his time in America to thank for that?... more »
Aug. 22, 2019 | Is “world literature“” a framework for engaging works one might otherwise neglect, or just an excuse to raid and profit off international writing?... more »
Aug. 21, 2019 | The case of the counterfeit Animal Farm. Inundated with fakes, Amazon says authors and publishers will have to police the market... more »
Aug. 20, 2019 | During World War I, Thomas Mann performed “intellectual military service” for Germany; by World War II, he was Hitler’s personal antagonist... more »
Aug. 19, 2019 | Our Graham in Havana. Graham Greene’s interventions in Cuban politics were hardly fictional — he actually contributed to Batista’s downfall... more »
Aug. 17, 2019 | Ayn Rand always held a certain appeal to precocious, contrarian youngsters. Now all the cool kids want to be socialists... more »
Aug. 16, 2019 | “Natural and unconstrained.” Nudism in America was shaped by Whitman, Thoreau, German philosophy, and the American Sunbathing Association... more »