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
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
The Twisted Art of Documentary
Read an essay from Ian Buruma's Theater of Cruelty, winner of the 2015 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. More
On Translating Jean-Paul de Dadelsen
It was because I’d read and translated Kaddour’s poem that, when I saw a collection of Dadelsen’s work on a bookshop’s tiny poetry shelf, I picked it up, leafed… More