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 Swindle & Fraud Rogue Wounds By Daniel Mason Playing ill or feigning madness has been a con for hundreds of years. But can a fake sickness become a real sickness? More
Essay Lines of Work The Mother of Possibility By Sven Birkerts Idleness is what happens when we thwart the impulse to plan forward, and instead enjoy the present. More
Essay Migration Doctors Without Borders By Deirdre Mask On the Black doctors who received their medical degrees and a new sort of freedom in Europe. More
Essay Trade A World Built on Sand and Oil By Laleh Khalili When natural resources become essential commodities. More
Essay Book of Nature The Great Bend By Simon Winchester What if the Yangtze River had turned south instead of east? More
Essay Travel A Little Travel Is a Dangerous Thing By D. Graham Burnett The first adventurers in the Age of Discovery didn’t just make progress into uncharted waters, they invented the very idea of progress. More
Essay Foreigners Enemy Aliens By Andrea Pitzer The life of Austrian painter Paul Cohen-Portheim and the forgotten history of World War I internment camps. More
Essay Medicine Course of Illness By Iain Bamforth Reconsidering an epic of illness—Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. More
