The Strange Life and Mysterious Death of a Panther-Trapping, Gator-Wrestling Wild ManTrapper Nelson was a Florida legend from the day he hopped off a boxcar to the day he died. But did he really kill himself, or was he murdered?
5 Things Not to Say to a Grieving Friend It’s almost impossible to know what to say to someone in the throes of grief. We all want to say something comforting. Very few of us know what that is.
When DEI Is Gone: A Look at the Fallout at One Texas UniversityStudents at the University of Texas-Austin have been in mourning as they watched the impact of anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) legislation on their campus.
Anthropologist David Graeber’s Celebrated Theory of “Bullshit Jobs” Continues to Provide a Critical Window Into Why Modern Work Is Often so Useless, Soul-Sucking, and Absurd.Anthropologist David Graeber’s theory of BS jobs provides a critical window into why modern work is so often so soul-sucking.
The Revenge of the World’s Most Famous Female PiratesTwo women take to the sea and become the most feared pirates in the world. Rare archival material brings to life the most authoritative narrative of history’s boldest pair of renegades.
How two amateur schools pulled a generation of thinkers from the workers and teachers of the 19th-century American Midwest‘As they say that Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that every body felt related to her, so Plato seems to a reader in New England an American genius. His broad humanity transcends all sectional lines.
The Banned Irish Writer Who Mined the Pain and Perks of Mid-Century MasculinityIn May, 1965, two hundred and sixty copies of “The Dark,” a novel by the Irish writer John McGahern, travelled from London to Dublin, where they were seized by customs officers and forwarded to Ireland’s Censorship of Publications Board.
How Arabic Translations of Ancient Greek Texts Started a New Scientific RevolutionIn the eighth-century CE the Abbasids undertook to collect the wisdom of the world in their new capital at Baghdad. This project started with the second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur (“the Conqueror,” r.
Students Paid Thousands for a Caltech Boot Camp. Caltech Didn’t Teach It.Caltech’s website touted the online program, and the school’s orange logo appeared on the promised certificates of completion. “I was just like, ‘Ah, man, this has got to be legit,’” said Mr.
Chartbook 322: "Can We Consume Our Surplus?" or John Maynard Keynes on "The Influence of Furniture on Love"John Maynard Keynes was an aesthete in the most capacious sense. Questions of beauty and artistic creation were at the heart of his ethical and political thinking.
Color, Class, and Carnality Collide in Alan Hollinghurst’s New NovelWhen Alan Hollinghurst published his scandalizing début, “The Swimming-Pool Library,” in 1988, the lives of gay men were hardly virgin territory for the English novel.
The Enduring Influence of Marx’s MasterpieceNo book has done more than Capital to explain the way the world works.
Why I Write My Own Obituary Every YearI’ve met a few others who do the same or something similar. A teacher I know likes to start every new year by writing her obituary or what she hopes it will look like by year’s end. Another friend writes hers on Rosh Hashana.
The most successful and influential Americans come from a surprisingly narrow range of elite educational backgroundsThe highest-achieving figures in politics, business, academia, and the media dominate public discourse and wield great influence in society. Educationperhaps especially at elite colleges and universitiesmay lie at the heart of the divide between the general public and these top achievers.
WH Auden’s visions of EnglandEdward Mendelson, WH Auden’s literary executor and editor, has called Nicholas Jenkins’s The Island “a Copernican revolution” in studies of the great poet. It’s a big claim, and for the first few dozen pages it looks as though it might be an exaggeration.