Barrett Brown wanted to use the internet to change the world. He ended up writing a remarkable memoir of his life in prison.

Lawrence Ingrassia lost his family members to cancer one by one. Why did it take so long for medicine to find the cause?

The diaries changed Che Guevara’s image from toughened fighter to sensitive, less certain young man.

Norman Mailer’s generation learned to “write like men.” But their female contemporaries from Mary McCarthy to Diana Trilling pioneered a more enduring style.

The American public is more susceptible than ever to skewed narratives.

Lucy Grealy’s 1994 bestseller has become part of a larger story of literary friendship and the boundaries between artists and their work.

Legacy Russell traces America’s reliance on—and profit from—Black imagery, from the 1910s to the Dancing Baby meme.

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.

Why does fiction do such a bad job of portraying fat characters?

“Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” is an enduring work—just not of history.

The 15-minute city proposed to shorten commutes and increase convenience. Why has it proven so divisive?

When Thomas Kuhn coined the term, he wasn’t referring simply to “out of the box” thinking.

His memoir “Knife” answers violence with art, and explores the limits of the imagination.

Joseph Weizenbaum’s underrated book “Computer Power and Human Reason” cautioned against confusing people with machines.

​The Jewish studies professor S​haul Magid thinks it’s possible to resist Zionism without rejecting the state. He calls this “counter-Zionism.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s “On Death and Dying” sparked a revolution in end-of-life care. But soon she began to deny mortality altogether.

Jason De León’s ambitious ethnography paints human smugglers not as inhuman villains but as individuals navigating an inhuman system.

Neighborhoods that once promised prosperity now offer crumbling infrastructure, aged housing stock, and social animus.

What Benedict Anderson’s classic account of nationalism’s origins misses about today’s world.

When a vaunted writer goes missing in the forest, her translators search for her—and for the meaning of their craft.