The Time is Right for a ‘Great Books’ Revival
To build a better world in the age of AI, students need grounding in indispensable ideas.
Fiction
Books
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The Toll
A poem
He Was Hugely Influential. He Also Had a Foolish Streak.
A recent biography of the writer John Berger reminds us about his hefty influence—and how he could be blinkered by his convictions.
An Adaptation That’s Both ‘Excellent’ and ‘Bizarre’
Lincoln in the Bardo is a bold novel that has rightfully inspired inventive adaptations.
What To Read
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50 Unforgettable Love Stories
Centuries of joyous, tragic, tantalizing, enduring fiction
Six Hard-to-Find Books Worth Reading
These titles are no longer fashionable, if they ever were—but should you manage to read one, you might love it.
What to Read to Wake Up Your Brain
These books can ease readers into a season of work and hard thinking.
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Six Books That Take You to Space
You won’t even have to leave your couch.
L’amour, CA
Isa couldn’t wait to leave the Philippines. But when we pull into an American town of foggy streets and gray, concrete houses, she looks confused, then panicked.
Sold
“I knew that all the things we’d gathered there so many years would be scattered and gone. All that had held it together would come apart and be gone as if it never was.”
Herman Wouk Is Still Alive
Brenda should be happy. The kids are quiet, the road stretches ahead of her like an airport runway, she's behind the wheel of a brand-new van. The speedometer reads 70. Nonetheless, that grayness has begun to creep over her again.
The Landscape of Pleasure
The man next to my father at the bar winked shyly at me. I had seen this man before. His name was Russell. He wasn’t a member of our club, but he and my father were friendly. He was a former Army officer, and he restored classic cars. “He’s unstoppable,” my father often said. “That man’s unstoppable.”
Lorelei
Howell was never caught. He lent a certain grace to his grift, even value to whatever he grabbed. The widows never felt cheated. They remembered the dark-haired stranger who drifted into their lives and made love to them like some Manhattan sheik. But Howell had little to do with Manhattan. He was from the Bronx. And because of his own odd chivalry, that ceiling he put on whatever he stole, Howell never grew rich.
Hopefulness
I’d become obsessed with my Neighborhood Watch duties, and my wife had taken up with Bob Martin. What bothers me is not the thought of Bob kissing my wife’s neck, or the thought of Bob putting my kids on his shoulders somewhere in Missouri, or that the Martin place has gone to hell under my watch. What bothers me, and repeatedly plays over in my mind, is the morning my wife left.
Visiting
He had become used to the way Marc turned questions around. His son was like Superman in that way, catching bullets in his hand and redirecting them. His own father had never answered his questions. He was not sure which was worse, to be mocked or to be ignored.
A Simple Case
Paiko had been waiting for his girlfriend to have sex with her last client when the police raided the brothel. “You will soon be released,” the Sergeant had kept telling him. So why was he now standing before the President and Commander in Chief of the Jungle Republic, the kangaroo court in Area F, which had “the worst torture chamber in the whole of this country”? And could the power of his storytelling save him?
Bone Hinge
The place where we are joined is a secret place for Hattie and me, especially since everyone always wants to look at it—a bone hinge covered in smooth skin, our spines locked together at the base. Lately, though, Hattie hates our hinge. She has fallen in love with Matthew, and he has proposed to her.