Are You Stodgy, Middling, or Wild?
“Metaphysical Animals” is not a dry book about philosophy; nor is it a juicy book about women’s friendships and lovers. It is both, in perfect balance.
By Jeannette Cooperman
Letter to a Young Leftist
You wanted to cut through all the tired old institutionalized ideals and raise up various identity groups’ struggles for justice, raise them so high they could not be ignored. But the ideas that shaped your impatience are grim.
“Adventure” Means Something New These Days
The title of Christopher Schaberg’s latest book is the perfect oxymoron: a frisson of thrilling risk followed by a grim grown-up reminder of constraint.
What Made Americans So Lonely
If you are alone, you have to reach out again and again to fill your life with meaningful connections. It is all terribly hard work. But it is nowhere near as hard as the alternative.
White Lies Seem Civilized—But They Drive Us Apart
Research now shows that sustaining even a tiny white lie requires quite a bit of bandwidth, and people falter if they are tired or multitasking. Intuiting this, and lazy by nature, I vowed in my teens that I would find gentle ways to tell the truth.
Can Gratitude Save Us?
Appreciation warms us. It is a gentle form of enthusiasm, which in the original Greek meant to be inspired by—even possessed by—a god. To have the divine inside you, glowing through the folds of viscera.
A Screenwriter Cuts through the Bullshit
Paul Guyot decided he would write his own damned book. But first he would have to read all those books he thought absurd.
A Scarf Can Hold the Universe Together
Nette wrapped each scarf in tissue, tied it with a bow, and added a note with washing instructions. I doled out these packages with diffidence; they offered nothing cool, trendy, or stylish.
Take a Hike
Hiking feels as sacred as church, carrying me into a pristine wilderness. But it also requires me to do what I am terrible at: pay attention to the physical, sensory, concrete world around me.
David Brooks Wants Us to Take Our Conversations Deeper
His talk won the kind of sustained applause that brings soloists back for an encore. In his version, this meant Q&A. How, as a nation, can we get past all this pain?
Where’s Waldo Now?
Waldo accrued rather a lot of wisdom in his travels. His books teach us to pay attention, if we want to spot the hidden details of the universe.
Why Lessons in Chemistry Reduced Me to Tears
Some griefs, like my overreaction to “Lessons in Chemistry,” overlap with our own past hurts.