Nonfiction

Narrative Control: How Stories Dominate Our Lives

Reviewing Alissa Wilkinson’s ‘We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine’

Jun 14 •

Books Before Print, Paper, and Pixel

The Art and Function of Medieval Manuscripts: Reviewing ‘The Lindisfarne Gospels,’ ‘Imperial Splendor,’ and ‘Performing the Gospels in Byzantium’

May 24 •

3 Ways to Make New Stuff Happen

Lessons in Innovation from Buckminster Fuller, Martin Luther King Jr., Milton Friedman, and Sonny Rollins

Apr 5 •

Ideas Are Tools, and Words Can Heal

An African American History of Literacy and Liberation, and What Their Words Mean for Us All

Feb 1 •

How to Predict the Future Better than a Dolphin

Imagining What’s Next. Reviewing ‘The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight’

Nov 27, 2024 •

Thinking Is a Group Sport

A Guide to Clear Thinking in a Confusing World: Alan Jacobs’s ‘How to Think’

Nov 13, 2024 •

Finding Your Needle in Chesterton’s Haystack

A Peek at Joseph W. Sprug’s Remarkable 1966 Index to 92 Books by Larger-than-Life G.K. Chesterton

Nov 6, 2024 •

First Draft, Last Draft: How Hemingway Became Hemingway

Reviewing the Celebrated Novelist’s Classic Memoir, ‘A Moveable Feast’

Oct 5, 2024 •

Blind Bard? What History Tells Us about ‘Homer and His Iliad’

Homer Was as Fictional as His Tale of the Trojan War, Right? Robin Lane Fox Says No

Sep 21, 2024 •

What the Ancient Greeks Can Teach Us about Innovation

We’ve got Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Jennifer Doudna. Who needs Aristotle? Reviewing ‘How to Innovate,’ translated by Armand D’Angour

Sep 18, 2024 •

Go on, Try It; The Semicolon Isn’t as Scary as You Think

Reviewing Cecelia Watson’s ‘Semicolon.’ Yes, It’s Really About Punctuation. You’ll Either Love It or Hate It; People Have Opinions

Sep 7, 2024 •

Not Useless: We Just Don’t Know What It’s for Yet

The Mothers of Invention? Fiddling and Patience. Reviewing Abraham Flexner’s ‘The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge’

Sep 4, 2024 •

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