Essays

 A series about living in New York.

As has always been the case in the writing of Alice Munro, the 2013 Nobel laureate for literature, one need examine only a small fragment of a single story to see the full implications of her work as a whole.

Poetry cannot fail, yet the role of poetry waxes and wanes in the lives of many people. We turn to it when we need it.

In Boswell’s visit with Rousseau, we discover a window into our contemporary selves.

You probably won’t be around for your death, and it’s probably all right that you miss it.

An enduring mystery surrounds the artistry of Thomas Cole.

About twenty-​five years ago, my younger brother and I set out into the oilseed-​rape fields behind our house to kill something with shotguns.

In terms of scale and scope of destruction, the series of floods that struck the Mississippi River system in the spring of 1927 (now known simply as “the great flood of 1927”) is regarded as one of the nation’s greatest natural disasters...