The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel

No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life

America’s Most Enduring Belief Is Also One of Its Most Dangerous

1776 All-Stars: George Washington Was a Model of Restraint

It Wasn’t Just the Founders

Mignon Dunn (1928 – 2026) Mezzo-Soprano

Artur Dmitriev (1968 – 2026) Ice Skater

Hannibal, Missouri is a company town, and the local industry is Mark Twain. "The perfume of manufactured nostalgia hangs heavy in the air"

Religious rites, rock concerts, and other transcendent moments stem from directing our attention to “something more than human”

Victor Willis (1951 – 2026) Lead Singer of Village People

Open Thread

Hermann Hesse on Solitude, the Value of Hardship, the Courage to Be Yourself, and How to Find Your Destiny

Lab-created ‘SpudCell’ marks ‘stunning’ step toward building life from scratch

Legendary Cellist Pablo Casals, at Age 93, on Creative Vitality and How Working with Love Prolongs Your Life

Nine Books That Showcase Queer Life in the Arab World

A Natural History of William Kentridge’s Studio

Hit by a car, beset by family tragedy, diagnosed with cancer: William T. Vollmann may be dying, but he’s also just finished a 3,000 page opus

Synthetic Cells to Sell Synthetic Biology

Original Intent of the Declaration

Birthright Blunders

Where Kant and Rousseau theorized, George Forster sailed the world to learn what makes humans human