Native Americans Apply the Methods of Sacha Baron Cohen

Coyote Mick Tomi leads the audience in the Black Snake Dance, part of the Indigenous Pipeline Council Presentation. The video seems legit, with its corporate-sounding platitudes and scenes of pretty families. “Everyone deserves energy,” it begins. “Energy fuels our favorite moments. But lately, the pathway to prosperity has been blocked.

Trial by Fire

We start something new, or should, by defining our terms. “Wait, does this mean we’re not seeing other people?” “Did the doctor mean no dairy, not even yogurt?” So when I joined the staff of The Common Reader, I went a little clammy at the realization that I was not…

The Stupid Fate of Scary Movies and the Smart Fears of Life

I remember being young and alone in a dark room, with “The Exorcist” suddenly on TV after an innocent turn of a dial. In an instant the girl’s head spun around, her mad face and deep voice full of the devil, and I felt like I might pass out.

Paul Rudd is Not Feeling Like Himself

The first season of the new streaming comedy Living with Yourself just dropped on Netflix. Each of the eight episodes is under 30 minutes, so the entire season can be binged in a night. It is worth a watch. Paul Rudd (most recently, Ant-Man) plays the starring (dual) role. Irish-born…

What We Do For the Love of Sports

Superfans’s profiles are powerful and compassionate narratives of the men and women who identify as such, but they are not particularly insightful considerations of the broader ramifications of fan behavior.

How London Emerged as the West’s First Global Capital

The sweeping title of the book promises much. Its author delivers both a bit more and a bit less.

Why the Hemingway Monument Still Matters

It is useful and maybe refreshing that a new book by Steve Paul allows us to meet a pre-monumental Ernest Hemingway.

Take Me Out to The Ball Game

The faith Willie had in me to protect him from anything untoward, even from being hurt by the elements, mirrors the faith I had in my grandfather to protect me from the street gangs when he took me to a game over fifty years ago.

The Rise and Fall of the Louisiana Coastline

For six of the seven years we have owned this house, I have told friends I hoped the next hurricane would just wash it off its slab into the sea—after we were safely north, of course.

A Good Time with a Bad Idea

How will our alien overlords memorialize us, one day? Which single item will be on display in their Museum of the Milky Way to represent the former human race? Never mind your Space Shuttle, your iPad, your book, rubber tire, ink pen, or corkscrew. It will be something ingenious, wasteful,…

Skip to content