The Talk of the Town series continues at the Coffee House with author Nicholas Fox Weber discussing his new book on artist, Anni Albers.

What we can learn from the published correspondence of literary critic and academic titan Harold Bloom.

References and suggested readings:Rod Flower. 2026. Drugs: The Story of Pharmacology. Yale University Press.On the CIA and LSD: MKUltra wikiAldous Huxley. The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell.“Celebrities Who’ve Shared Their Ayahuasca Exper...

A review of Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds, “Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic” (Yale University Press 2025)

Aristotle is history's most influential thinkers. His ideas shaped fields from biology to logic to ethic and political theory.

There is no question that this new volume will be the resource that all subsequent historians will turn to when they explore the trajectory of classical ballet’s slow -- and not yet completed -- chore...

The Independent is an important voice in the community of readers and writers dedicated to book reviews and writing about the world of books.

The caregivers who swooped in to help begin the healing process for Holocaust survivors.

An excerpt from the late congressman’s new book on the struggle to rebuild a Democratic majority.

Economist Allison Schrager argues that learning to understand and embrace productive risks is essential to escaping stagnation.

The late congressman’s posthumous book condemns dogmatic insistence on unpopular ideas and offers a roadmap for reconciliation.

A proposal for a new international system that is at once centralized and regionalized.

Vila-Matas (Bartleby & Co.) charms with this speculative tale about an experiment in cultivating a literary sensibility. After a...

Where is art going, who is it for, and what can it tell us about our world? To think these questions through, we might begin by looking back

The latest literary fiction, tense mysteries, celebrity memoirs and much more

Jews achieved rights of citizenship, then sometimes saw those rights withdrawn or limited, then sometimes saw them restored.

Queen Artemesia challenges the long-held stereotype that ancient Greek women were confined to the home and excluded from public life.

The crowds that gathered to welcome him often waited all day, sometimes several days, for his arrival. Yet crowds were always there to greet him.

The catholicity of dreams makes them powerful but politically ambivalent. In my mind, the dreams of utopian Christianity are no different.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are usually presented as proof of the Bible's truth or accuracy, but their real significance is more complicated.

I traveled around the country to find out if “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” still has a place in the classroom.

Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

In 431 BC, Athenian audiences attending the annual drama festival probably expected the plays to revolve around the usual retellings of myths about the Trojan War and the heroic age. Instead, they were treated to a performance of a very different tale. One of the tragedies that debuted that year told the story of a […]

Jean Toomer was the visionary author of Cane, and transformed American Literature as one of the forefront writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

Rumor has it that King Henry VIII was tricked into marrying his fourth wife after seeing her beguiling portrait, but it may have been a clash of personalities and cultures that doomed their union from the start.

A new book by Ian Marcus Corbin diagnoses our loneliness and calls us back to belonging and community.

An interview with historian Ned Blackhawk on the United States’ contested founding.

The concepts of time, memory and perspective are elusive and finicky. In Sarah Minor’s Carousel (Yale University Press), our speaker attempts to guide us through all manner of experiences that may lead us closer to an understanding. Carousel, billed as “an essay on seeing,” is an ambitious and artful collection of vignettes that weave together […]

Marquis de Lafayette's yearlong tour, during which he visited all 24 states now in the Union, had a “double purpose."