March 23, 2021 | Forget traditional majors — the humanities should organize itself around modules like Social Justice, Migration Studies, and The Problem of God ... more »
March 22, 2021 | The handshake, past and future. The gesture is so culturally fundamental that something important will be lost if it disappears ... more »
March 20, 2021 | Edward Said’s Orientalism started a politics of blame that rapidly spread in the academy. He spent decades trying to stanch it ... more »
March 19, 2021 | Alfred Hitchcock was afraid of policemen, strangers, driving, solitude, crowds, heights, water, and conflict. Fear was his creative fuel ... more »
March 18, 2021 | Jane Cornwell was far more than a typist; she was John le Carré's first editor and indispensable collaborator ... more »
March 17, 2021 | Jessica Krug, Rachel Dolezal — lefty academics’ identity hoaxing may involve trading mundane traumas for grander narratives of oppression ... more »
March 16, 2021 | Music unheard and books unread are an affront to our sense of hope and the individualistic tenor of our age ... more »
March 15, 2021 | We remember Charlotte Perkins Gilman as a pioneering feminist, a social reformer. But look closer and you’ll see a Victorian white nationalist ... more »
March 13, 2021 | In 1883, fragments of the "original" Book of Deuteronomy were declared a fraud. But what if this notorious fake is real? ... more »
March 12, 2021 | George Saunders is the prince of the M.F.A. age. Key to his literary stardom and his writerly talents is his relatability ... more »
March 11, 2021 | Daryl Michael Scott, critic of the 1619 project and of Ava DuVernay’s film 13th: “Bad history and worse social science have replaced truth”... more »
March 10, 2021 | The paradox of Orientalism: While Edward Said's book castigated imperialism, it also weakened the anti-imperialist intellectual project... more »
March 9, 2021 | The idea that people on their deathbeds gain a clearer view of what matters has a distinguished philosophical pedigree. That doesn't mean it's true ... more »
March 8, 2021 | Carl Hart has used heroin regularly for years. “I am an unapologetic drug user,” says the Columbia University psychology professor ... more »
March 6, 2021 | Paul Valéry hobnobbed with princesses, ministers, and scientists. By the 1930s, he was France’s poetic stuffed shirt extraordinaire ... more »
March 5, 2021 | Originalism’s original sin. The judicial philosophy is best understood not in a legal context, but as an extension of biblical literalism ... more »
March 4, 2021 | Two of the largest U.S. publishers want to merge. How many imprints will fold? How many jobs will be lost? ... more »
March 3, 2021 | Jordan Petersen is rich, famous, and unhappy. His anxiety landed him in a Russian hospital. Now he's back from breakdown ... more »
March 2, 2021 | Sherry Turkle, MIT’s “one-woman emergency empathy squad,” is a critic of technology amid its evangelists...more... more »
March 1, 2021 | The tragic legacy of “comfort women” has divided South Korea and Japan for decades. Enter the dubious claims of a Harvard law professor ... more »
Feb. 27, 2021 | Parul Sehgal read 125 years of writing in The New York Times Book Review. She found mostly a dearth of style and a failure of criticism... more »
Feb. 26, 2021 | The book blurb requires too much work and induces too much guilt. As Viet Thanh Nguyen says, “Kill it. Bury it. Dance on its grave.”... more »
Feb. 25, 2021 | What happens when race, class, and power collide at an elite liberal-arts college? No one emerges unscathed ... more »
Feb. 24, 2021 | No human invention has destroyed the civilization that invented it. We haven't been careful or wise — just lucky ... more »
Feb. 23, 2021 | Two bookshelves, all but identical in appearance and construction, exemplify two radically different ideas about politics and design... more »