We’ve uploaded everything anyone has ever known onto a worldwide network of machines. What if it doesn’t have all the answers?
Many Americans who advocate it have little interest in religion and an aversion to American culture as it currently exists. What really defines the movement?
What can elephants, birds, and flamenco players teach a neuroscientist-composer about music?
The New York Times Book Review – March 26, 2023:
Her new story collection, “Old Babes in the Wood,” offers elegiac scenes from a marriage plus a grab bag of curious fables.
There are authors we turn to because they can uncannily predict our future; there are authors we need for their skillful diagnosis of our present; and there are authors we love because they can explain our past. And then there are the outliers: those who gift us with timelines other than the one we’re stuck in, realities far from home. If anyone has proved, over the course of a long and wildly diverse career, that she can be all four, it’s Margaret Atwood.
Michael Lesy’s book of historical photographs and found text offers a singular portrait of American life.
Michael Lesy’s 1973 book “Wisconsin Death Trip” is an American oddity, a cult classic for a reason. In a way that few documentary texts do, it makes us leave the baggage of modernity at the trailhead. It forces us back into the inconceivably long nights in rural and small-town America before the widespread use of electricity, before radio, before antibiotics for dying children and antidepressants for anxiety bordering on mania, when events could make a family feel that some nocturnal beast had chalked its door.
The first installment of an essay series on American literature and faith.
I am a child of the church. In an early memory, I am 6 years old, half-asleep in the back of my grandparents’ station wagon on the way home from a revival…
EDITOR’S LETTER – Bricks-and-mortar retail, from tiny independent shops to giant malls, can shape and inspire the community around it. Andrew Tuck finds Monocle’s Retail Survey reflecting what we’ve always believed: that in-person experiences are the most valuable. There’s plenty more too.
Once derelict, Gurney Manor Mill was rescued in the early 1990s and transformed into a lovely family home.
Any property that is surrounded by water is guaranteed to be impressive. It’s sort of an unwritten rule. Naturally, as a former watermill, Gurney Manor Mill falls into this category: the mill and its 1.2 acres of gardens are surrounded by the historicwater system, creating a bucolic setting.
Amelia Thorpe selects watering cans for the home and garden
Don’t know your potassium from your phosphorus? Fear not, as Steven Desmond explains what to feed your plants and when
There’s more to ornamental apple trees than merely fruit, reveals Charles Quest-Ritson
Meet the ‘gentleman in velvet’—Harry Pearson unearths the underground world of the mole
In Alsace, the abbey of Mont Sainte-Odile is famous for its supposedly miraculous spring water. Finally, on the outskirts of Montpellier, Valmagne abbey used to be a wine cellar. Visitors can still observe the gigantic barrels that were once used to store thousands of litres of wine.
A popular, growing class of drugs for obesity and diabetes could, in an ideal world, help us see that metabolism and appetite are biological facts, not moral choices.
From the poster that turned Bob Dylan into an icon to the logo that helped revive a flagging city, he gave sharp outlines to the spirit of an age.
The Good Life France Magazine – Spring 2023:
This issue whisks off to the lovely Loire Valley to discover two historic royal castles – Loches and Chinon as well as – the real Sleeping Beauty castle and gorgeous Villandry which has fairy tale pretty gardens – garden envy guaranteed. Read the extraordinary story of a postman who built a palace from pebbles with his bare hands in a tiny village in the Drôme, southeastern France. Not only that – he did it at night after he finished work – by candle light!
Follow the history of the Plantagenet English Kings through Anjou and Normandy. Fall in love with exquisite Vaucluse in Provence where nature has a party in the spring. And sigh over chocolate box lid pretty Le Perche in Normandy.
Come with us to the Roman city of Arles, Aigues Mortes – where the sea is pure pink and flamingos roam, and to sunny, festive Sète with its incredible lagoons. Discover delicious Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France, and its surroundings. Explore Brittany and Les Charentes – Charente and Charente-Maritime. Fairy tale pretty Alsace is unmissable – we look at the most picturesque villages and the historic wine route. Plus the magic of sun-kissed Provence captured in photos, will have you dreaming.
The New York Times Book Review – March 19, 2023:
The new book by the sociologist and author of “Evicted” examines the persistence of want in the wealthy United States, finding that keeping some citizens poor serves the interests of many.
Brazil’s ultra urban megacity overwhelms the landscape and the imagination. Paulo Scott recommends books that peel back its layers.
The fashion world’s hunger for larger-than-life figures glorified the designer. But a cozy new biography shows him to be more business whiz than artist.
Our culture is dominated by efforts to score points and win arguments. But do we really talk anymore?
There was once a time when strangers talked to one another, sometimes eagerly. “In past eras, daily life made it necessary for individuals to engage with others different from themselves,” Paula Marantz Cohen explains. In those moments of unpredictability and serendipity, we confronted difference. There were no smartphones, message boards, or online factions. Maybe because life moved at a slower pace, and every interaction wasn’t so freighted with political meaning, we had the opportunity to recognize our full humanity. Nowadays, she argues, we are sectarian and “self-soothing,” having fallen out of such practice. What we need is to return to the basics: to brush up on the art of conversation.
A succession battle involving a fight for the patronage of Sarah Jessica Parker threatens to stop the presses at a Greenwich Village newspaper.
An entomologist races to find them before they disappear.
Caterpillars are to lepidoptera—butterflies and moths—what grubs are to beetles and maggots are to flies; they are larvae. Even among nature lovers, larvae tend to be unloved. For every ten butterfly fanciers, there are approximately zero caterpillar enthusiasts. The reason for this will, to most, seem obvious. The worm in the apple is usually a caterpillar.
The New York Times Book Review – March 12, 2023:
In Jenny Jackson’s debut novel, “Pineapple Street,” readers get a tour of a world they might learn not to envy by the end of the book.
Watch for reality-bending explorations of time and space, a Western horror novel from Victor LaValle and new fiction from Han Kang. Plus: Tom Hanks (yes, that Tom Hanks) releases his debut novel.
A new book by Joel Warner traces the fate of the parchment on which the infamous author wrote “120 Days of Sodom,” a trail involving scholars, aristocrats and thieves — and lots of money.
Boomers Daily 