Who is David?
October 2, 2017
David Wolpe— We wish our heroes to be attractively flawed: brave but heedless, good but confused, wise yet inexplicably sad. A minor crack in character makes the vessel seem that… READ MORE
Category: Humanities
What is Religion?
September 15, 2017
Richard Holloway— As with many useful words, symbol comes from Greek. It means to bring together things that had come apart, the way you might glue the bits of a broken plate… READ MORE
The Historical Assault on the Language of the Deaf
August 18, 2017
Gerald Shea— Noam Chomsky, giving a lecture in Chicago in 1965, mistakenly defined language as “a specific sound-to-meaning correspondence.” When asked where this left the signed languages of the Deaf,… READ MORE
ISIS, Christianity, and the Pact of Umar
August 16, 2017
David J. Wasserstein— When ISIS forces took the Iraqi city of Mosul in the summer of 2014, and later on when they took Raqqa in Syria, they did not kill… READ MORE
The Limits of Tolerance
August 15, 2017
Emily Katz Anhalt— The ancient Greeks were open-minded without being tolerant. They didn’t devise the world’s first-ever democracy by tolerating everything. Their unprecedented transition from tribalism to civil society derived… READ MORE
A Conversation Between Patrick Modiano Translators Mark Polizzotti and Damion Searls
August 14, 2017
On the heels of our publication of Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano’s Such Fine Boys and Sundays in August in English, two of his esteemed translators sat down to discuss Modiano’s idiosyncratic… READ MORE
Rethinking American Religion in the Age of Trump
August 11, 2017
Mark Oppenheimer— When I published Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture, in 2003, the field of the 1960s was still relatively under-studied, the field of American… READ MORE
#BookLoversDay: Books about Books for Book Lovers
August 9, 2017
Feed your book cravings with a book about book, it’s International Book Lovers Day! This list features books about reading books, writing books, studying books, and the history of the… READ MORE
Jenny Diski: On Babyface
August 8, 2017
Jenny Diski— The great advantage over real live creatures that my Three Bears had in common with Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, aside from not needing to be fed or produce… READ MORE
Writing and Self-Hatred
August 4, 2017
Devorah Baum— In his amazingly pleasurable new book, In Writing, psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips describes writing, in his experience, as an “amazing pleasure.” Lucky him. He sits down to… READ MORE
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