botticelli primavera

Ten Favorite Love Poems

Love poems by Pablo Neruda, Joyce Carol Oates, Kenneth Koch, Willie Perdomo, Robert Penn Warren, Edith Wharton, and more.
The Handmaid's Tale

Lessons in Resistance from The Handmaid’s Tale

The seminal Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid's Tale feels all too relevant in a time of dystopic “debate” over the worth of women.
young women talking

The Totally “Destructive” (Yet Oddly Instructive) Speech Patterns of… Young Women?

Two years ago, this column sprang into life by enthusiastically wading into the absurdly long-running debate about some ...
PG Wodehouse cover

P.G. Wodehouse, Great American Humorist?

Should P.G. Wodehouse, creator of the ditzy Wooster and inimitable Jeeves, be considered an American humorist as well as a master of British farce?
Lincoln Center trees

Speaking for the Trees

David George Haskell's book The Song of the Trees: Stories From Nature's Great Connectors, explores trees' connections with various communities.
Little Women

Did Victorians Really Get Brain Fever?

The melodramatic descriptions of "fevers" in old novels reveal just how frightening the time before modern medicine must have been.
Illustration of Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor’s Moments of Grace

Flannery O'Connor employed grotesqueness and violence in her stories to illustrate the workings of grace on her characters.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

Kathleen Rooney’s Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Move over flâneur, here comes the flâneuse, the female version of the famous French walkers.
Houdini poster

The Man Who Pulled the First Houdini

Harry Houdini wasn't always famous for his daring escapes. A look at how the humble Hungarian immigrant became the world's most famous magician.
Dallas JR

Did the Internet Kill the TV Cliffhanger?

The internet may have changed the concept of the television cliffhanger, but is it possible that knowing the ending of something increases our enjoyment?