Becky Zhang: “The Precipice” is set at a private all-girls school in Los Angeles in the Nineties, but is written from the ...

I’m talking about the rupture of a civilizing thread—historic events, like the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter on April ...

Sherrill: You’ve lived in New York City for a number of years, as you note in the piece. It’s an old city, certainly, but doesn’t have nearly the “temporal depth” of London. Is there also a ...

At that moment we somehow knew that it was the beach where the artist, with a perfect taste for drama, for a great story, for a piercing ray of light, had met his end. His signature might have been ...

The rules of Japan’s national sport are relatively straightforward: two rikishi—literally, “strong men”—face each other near the center of the ring, crouched on their haunches, like plus-size ...

From the transcript of testimony, in 1956, by Paul Robeson before the House Un-American Activities Committee, as collected in A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth to Power During the ...

The speaker of “Danse Russe,” William Carlos Williams’s oft-anthologized poem, gyrates naked before his mirror, singing, “I am lonely, lonely. / I was born to be lonely, / I am best so!” Good for him, ...

When the crow whisperer appeared at the side gate to Adam Florin and Dani Fisher’s house, in Oakland, California, she was dressed head to toe in black, wearing a hoodie, gloves, and a mask. This was a ...

We will never know how many died during the Butlerian Jihad. Was it millions? Billions? Trillions, perhaps? It was a fantastic rage, a great revolt that spread like wildfire, consuming everything in ...

Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in U.S. and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala, translated by William Savinar. Vanderbilt University Press. 206 pages. $34.95. The Dope: The Real History of ...