Rain: A Natural and Cultural History

"Rain and two more of its wondrous pride—clouds and rainbows—have inspired writers, painters, and poets for thousands of years. Ho­mer’s Iliad is thick with clouds, as is much of… More

Irreparable Harm

The election of Bush was never the real problem. The assertion of power—in a matter in which the Court is morally and constitutionally precluded from playing any part—is. More

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for Between the World and Me. Read an excerpt of the book. More

The Disappearance Approach

He was lying in his bed with his eyes closed. I knew when I saw him with the CPAP mask over his mouth and nose and heard the whooshing… More

Humanism

"I am content to place humankind at the center of Creation. We are complex enough, interesting enough. What we have learned, limited as we must assume it to be,… More

Los Angeles Plays Itself

"As much as any city, Los Angeles is a work-in-progress, a landscape of fragments where the boundaries we take for granted in other environments are not always clear." More

The Self-Deceptions of Empire

David Bromwich is finalist for the 2015 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for the collection Moral Imagination, which explores the importance of imagination and sympathy in… More

The Empathy Exams

The title essay of Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams, a finalist for the 2015 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. More