Essay Education A Speculative Endeavor By Eleni Schirmer Education has become an investment. But what are its returns? More
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 Night Nocturnal Howling By Philippe Petit Night escapes definition, but it terrifies nonetheless. A tour of the terror and joys of the darkness. More
Essay Eros Fear and Loathing By Dagmar Herzog How the Kinsey Reports forever altered America’s sexual landscape—and not for the better. More
Essay Comedy Split Personalities By Andrew McConnell Stott Is it a condition of comic genius to be always wrestling with demons? More
Essay The City A Matter of Optics By Warren Breckman Rulers of cities have always had an interest in visibility, both in representing their power and in controlling people by seeing them. More
Essay Politics Working the Room By Michael Phillips-Anderson Presidential humor from Lincoln to Kennedy to Reagan. More
Essay Animals How to Be a Stuffed Animal By Frances Stonor Saunders The American Museum of Natural History, Teddy Roosevelt, and the importance of taxidermy. More
Essay Travel The Vehicle of Language By Billy Collins Poetry invites us to take an imaginative journey: from the flatness of practical language into the rhythms and sound systems of poetic speech. More
Essay Democracy Hiding in Plain Sight By David Graeber and David Wengrow Democracy’s indigenous origins in the Americas. More
