Literature

The big, unknowable questions in life are seductive, but without small, trivial questions as insulation, those large mysteries can consume us.

Get lost in a good book. Time and again, reading has been shown to make us healthier, smarter, and more empathic.

Poop, soup, books — repeat. Who could forget that montage? Here are the key takeaways from the first episode of Game of Thrones season 7, which crashed the HBO website like wildfire taking down the Sept. 

Why is Machiavelli’s The Prince still relevant today? 

What’s it like to be a minority in America? To find out, read a book written by one.

Storied skills and a musical analogy might help us update the logic of “virtue ethics.” In life, as in jazz, freedom without skills results in a lot foolish noise. 

How do you win a Nobel Prize in Literature? First you must get nominated, then it gets hard.

Though the logic of the Nobel committee is pretty easy to glean when it comes to the sciences, in other, less-defined categories, it surprises on a fairly regular basis. 

We didn’t mind Maureen Dowd’s dismantling of (whatever remains of) the mythologizing of Dylan as a hero for/of protest. There was a moment in time when Dylan was hero for […]