August 2026

Omri Boehm’s politics suffer from an excess of certitude and righteousness, a deficit of lament, and a proclivity for and ease with lethal violence.

In his biography of W. H. Auden, Peter Ackroyd tracks the constant tension between public and private life that the poet navigated.

"Knowing // it is love that drives the sun, the moon and all the stars, I went / down to the inner room, / laid out the notebook, called on the Spirit"

"The svelte warm-blooded chipmunk / crouched in curvaceous repose to sun / himself in the niche atop our rock wall"

"Seigniorial she rises, claps sand, strides over, / then bends and sweeps up the pale blue baby / and teaches it its first world."

"When we wonder why death takes a life too soon, we bring forth a more wondrous puzzle: Why are there lives to be taken at all?"

Four eminent democratic theorists discuss Francis’s culture of encounter and its significance for democracy in the United States and around the world.

Sardinian arist Pinuccio Sciola built a life on the claim that stones can sing. Ten years after his death, visitors to his stone garden can listen for themselves.

Trump is the sort of miser you come across in some especially ghoulish fairy tale. Will he ever get his comeuppance?

Who should test the world's riskiest drugs? Today, that job falls to the economically vulnerable.