Essay Book of Nature And Such Small Deer By Garret Keizer A writer struggles to defend his trees from a pack of hungry deer—“an episode of great vexation and buffoonery.” More
Essay Time The Grand Illusion By Jim Holt Does time have a future? Yes, but how much of a future depends on what the ultimate fate of the cosmos turns out to be. More
Essay Sports & Games Blossom and Fade By John Crowley Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game is an experience with the pathos and wonder of all games—the game that is the universe. More
Essay Lines of Work Lost Tools By Donovan Hohn A tour of the antique tool trade confirms that they just don’t make things like they used to. More
Essay Fashion The Climb of Ivy By W. David Marx The styles of the American Ivy League transform the fashions of 1960s Japan. More
Essay Foreigners Istanbul Panorama By Bernd Brunner Turkey’s largest city has a long history of cosmopolitanism, but how does its cosmopolitan past differ from its cosmopolitan present? More
Essay Time Strange Days By Sven Birkerts During convalescence it grows hard to tell the difference between when to pass the time and when to allow time to pass through. More
Essay The City Waiting for Goffman By Michael Dirda There are few better interpreters of modern metropolitan life than sociologist Erving Goffman. More
Essay Swindle & Fraud We Buy Broken Gold By Clancy Martin Why would a wealthy diamond merchant in a three-thousand-dollar suit want to cheat me out of a hundred bucks’ worth of gold? More
