The Chinese word tao is usually translated as “way,” which seems simple and straightforward enough, until one investigates the wider implications of the term. Stephen McDonough’s marvelous book, Tao of Life and Death – A Tale,... Read More

This harrowing historical novel begins and ends with a haunting image: “February in Bangladesh is the month of martyrs to the mother tongue and girls in red bordered yellow saris offer marigolds to them.” Educator Aquila Ismail has... Read More

When Paul Simon wrote, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls,” he undoubtedly had not met Richard Sharp, whose “prophets” find other means—and places—to impart their messages. The Duke Don’t Dance,... Read More

In an article about writer-director Kevin Smith for The New Yorker, Tad Friend found himself resorting to code. Each time Smith referenced an intimate body part during his Carnegie Hall performance, Friend replaced it with “Wayne... Read More

Values, ethics, forgiveness, and the fragile thread that entwines them create both the human foundation and the ultimate conflict at the core of Doug and Sally Mayfield’s beautifully written novel, "Angle of Declination". Allie, the... Read More

Even ninety years later, the 1920s still roar in the collective imagination of writers, readers, painters, and dreamers everywhere. It was a wild time when flappers and philanderers challenged taboos. The guns of the Great War were... Read More

Death, at the grim hand of cancer, mines a person of the body he or she spent a lifetime in. It devours, destroys, and erodes everything. Its changes move too slowly to be seen daily, but over weeks and months, family and friends are... Read More

Francis Spufford is a British writer with highly eccentric interests. In I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, he produced a cultural history of ice, Eskimos, and polar exploration. His previous book, Backroom Boys: The... Read More