Jason Lewis’s account of the first leg of his human-powered trip around the world, from London to Pueblo, Colorado, is filled with mishaps and faulty planning. On one pre-excursion photo-op—to show off the pedal-powered boat that... Read More

Howard Bloom delves into the origins of the universe, the history of science and ideas, and the workings of creative consciousness with the depth and detail of a scholar, and he advances his thesis with the wiles and persistence of a... Read More

About 1.65 million graduating seniors from the class of 2011 took the SAT exam, and the first challenge each of those teens faced on test day was the SAT essay—two blank pages that Tom Clements calls “every high school student’s... Read More

It is the 2005-06 school year at Northlake High School, which serves the posh suburb of Pinot Bay, near Austin, Texas. When Preston Wiley is not out on sprawling Lake Travis on his father’s thirty-seven-foot yacht, The Ion, or partying... Read More

The villagers call him the Story Man; the whites know him as the Barefoot Librarian. He walks from one village to the next, carrying loads of books and conducting performances based on the stories he reads. Sometimes he imagines he is... Read More

Nathan Menzel is the wrinkle on his father’s forehead, a rather timid would-be writer and pianist who grew up on Bach and Schubert. Gerhard Rosenblum is two years older, an exuberant saxophonist and med student who has been discovering... Read More

“I teach only two things—suffering and the end of suffering,” said the Buddha. Through the Dharma—truth or path to truth—he explained that suffering originates in the clinging mind, and that suffering is released by an... Read More

It would take no less than a poet with an evolved spirit and keen sense of history to add new insights on the Holocaust. Andre Schwarz-Bart (1928–2006), a Polish Jew whose parents and brothers were victims of the Nazis, was just such a... Read More