Poems that reflect and reinterpret the pastoral tradition, by Louise Glück, Alex Dimitrov, Rebecca Lehmann, Sam Sax, Natasha Trethewey, and more.

An interview with writer and poet Rebecca Lehmann, who finds splendid things can follow when she stretches the rules of craft.

There were compensations for the hardscrabble life of the Gold Rush—like monkeys and parrots brought to California for companionship and entertainment.

Between 1931 and 1947, Henry Ford financed an experimental farm in Essex to see if industrial American farming methods could be applied to British fields.

The broad, ever-expanding field of Jewish Studies is united by texts, events, and figures that engage an established canon of ideas across disciplines.

The 1983 invasion of Grenada raised questions about the legitimacy of American reactions to a communist presence on the island.

The algorithms that promise to predict wildfires and optimize energy grids are powered by servers that drink up rivers and belch out more carbon than cars.

The English thinker whose name is synonymous with doom and gloom has lessons for today.

Scientists look to “probiotics” for crops as a new green revolution in agriculture.

The term “white trash” once was used to disparage poor white people. In the Civil Rights era, its meaning shifted to support business-friendly racial politics.