Songs of Convenience

Again and again in Yasujiro Ozu’s films, women ask what it means to lighten other people’s burdens—and what they might lose in the process.

December 31, 2023

‘The Eye of the Beholder’

Administrators at Columbia and other US universities have been cracking down on student protest against the war in Gaza—even as right-wing politicians demand they go further.

December 24, 2023

The Old Man at Christmas

The humorist Jean Shepherd—whose writings inspired A Christmas Story—left a surprisingly deep impression on American culture.

December 19, 2023

The Long War on Gaza

Over fifty-six years, Israel has transformed Gaza from a functional economy to a dysfunctional one, from a productive society to an impoverished one.

December 19, 2023

The Long War on Gaza

Over fifty-six years, Israel has transformed Gaza from a functional economy to a dysfunctional one, from a productive society to an impoverished one.

December 19, 2023

Letter from Mount Lebanon

Peace is precarious in Lebanon, where everyone remembers the toll of previous conflicts and fears the spread of war.

December 10, 2023

An Exchange on Holocaust Memory

Is the history of Nazism and the Holocaust a useful point of comparison for Hamas’s crimes, or a false analogy?

December 8, 2023

No Endgame in Gaza

After weeks of bombardment and thousands of deaths, what are Netanyahu’s political and ethical limits?

December 7, 2023 issue

An Overabundance of Virtue

The scholar James Hankins has argued that the revival of ancient virtues was a central concern of Renaissance humanists. But can those virtues also be revived in modern America?

September 21, 2023 issue

The Orphan Among Revolutions

Christopher Clark’s history of the 1848 revolutions highlights the destinies of individuals and the legacy of the tumults.

October 5, 2023 issue

History Bright and Dark

Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum and the documentary series based on the 1619 Project reflect deep divisions in how we recount our nation’s past.

May 25, 2023 issue

Blues, Grays & Greenbacks

Two new books argue that the innovations the Lincoln administration used to finance the Civil War transformed the nation from a modest and decentralized economy into the global juggernaut of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

May 25, 2023 issue

The Magic of Donatello

“Since the end of classical antiquity nearly a thousand years before, no Italian sculptor had tried anything so bold in the carving of marble sculpture.”

April 23, 2015 issue

The Magician

“Raphael would portray these same disciples in a painted vortex that forms—an image of pure wind—the center of his phenomenal Transfiguration, spinning each of them off on his own headlong spiral trajectory, every twist and turn of a body in space now totally under control.”

December 16, 2004 issue

Lucian Freud’s Pitiless Eye

Violent, curious, nosy, intrusive—sometimes tender—Lucian Freud was a pitiless observer of the human body, and of human vulnerability and frailty.

August 22, 2016

Gold & Geld

“Does its subject’s lush, heavy-lipped, dark-browed, green-eyed face, beneath a black blob of hair and above a silver-encrusted collar, really mesh with the astonishing efflorescence of perspective-free patterns—eyes, spirals, squares, streaks, and splotches, ostensibly related to the wistful sitter’s dress, robe, and armchair?”

December 20, 2007 issue

What Is Wildness?

Wildness, a name we give to living nature, is intangible, maybe even ineffable, but it’s not imaginary—it’s biological.

May 16, 2023

Monotreme Dreams

Australia’s egg-laying monotremes and pouch-carrying marsupials may seem to be outliers, but they’re as well suited to their environment as any other mammal.

February 23, 2023 issue

Whack-a-Rat

The rats of Paris have presented their human neighbors with centuries of complex problems, and now face a controversial future.

August 17, 2023 issue

Trees in Themselves

The oldest trees prompt us to think about how embedded we are in time and could help us recalibrate our perspective on the geologic past.

March 23, 2023 issue

The Christmas Story

“He felt the tickling vacuum that always accompanied the urge to write. In this vacuum something was taking shape, growing. A new, special kind of Christmas…. Same old snow, brand-new conflict….”

November 16, 1995 issue

Diaspora Disneys

Hanukkah commemorates Jewish persistence against overwhelming odds, when oil lamps meant to last a single day stayed alight for eight. Five years ago, I heard of what seemed another miracle.

December 23, 2011

Winter Journey

a poem

December 17, 2020 issue

Art for Christmas

Andrew Wyeth’s very titles—Groundhog Day, Hickory Smoked, Moose Horns, Logging Scoot—personify the American way of life, and the works themselves gladden hearts.

December 9, 1976 issue

Christmas in July

My first summer job was trimming Christmas trees in July. I learned that pines, spruces, and firs do not grow naturally into their pyramidal shapes but struggle toward the light, as we all do.

December 23, 2017

Some Winter Wonders

The great pianist on the great lyricist’s Winterreise.

June 4, 2015 issue

On the Eve: A Story

“The sky begins to cloud over in a sudden metamorphosis of intention. The word, snow, appears in the drift of voices.”

December 22, 1983 issue

A Soviet New Year

Once a year, the Soviet people had the right to be hopeful. And so we were. The mayonnaise helped.

December 30, 2017

Édouard/Edgar

“It is not a question of who is following whom, but of overlapping networks and a shared commitment to be ‘of one’s time.’”

January 6, 2024

A Winter Person

“I work from home, which I have done for most of my artistic career. I need to be alone and enjoying the silence in order to work.”

December 16, 2023

‘A Powerful Day to You, Sir!’

“The Irish, as a rule, tend to be aesthetes of chat.”

December 9, 2023