Why do we praise even the most futile efforts to meet opponents halfway?

The Portuguese writer lived through dozens of detailed alter egos. How much does his real identity matter?

His muddled defense of liberalism comes with a heavy dose of disdain for the left.

Eyal Press’s new book studies essential workers who face a unique occupational hazard: moral injury.

Rather than focus on Bill Clinton or Monica Lewinsky, the show makes Linda Tripp the key to understanding the tangled and toxic politics of the late 1990s.

How the turn toward “precision” combat promoted endless war

The Netflix show with Sandra Oh captures an existential crisis.

A new book on Green Bank, West Virginia, falls into some of the worst tropes of writing about rural America.

Most of the big tech attempts to “disrupt” the book have failed.

The characters in Sally Rooney’s “Beautiful World, Where Are You” want you to know they considered alternatives to capitalism.

Bob Ross was the soft-spoken “Happy Painter,” beloved by audiences. When he died, conflict erupted.

His works have been banned and championed, praised and denounced. Love him or hate him, Lawrence is always worth arguing with.

In her formally experimental series of autobiographies, Deborah Levy takes a rollicking, intimate journey through the challenges of motherhood and writing.

This year’s insane transfer-window period has illuminated the sport’s apocalyptic financial inequities.

Nia DaCosta’s reimagining of the cult classic explores the dangers of making art about pain.

Leos Carax’s movie is an idiosyncratic showcase for an unlikely, idiosyncratic star.

Nonfiction narratives that purport to explain life in Islam’s far-flung capitals paper over the brutal hand of U.S. foreign policy.

We ascribe too much meaning to the early years of the republic.

In over 150 hours of his podcast “Revolutions” and a new book, Duncan wrestles with centuries of upheaval.

How the cataclysms of the past loomed over Sebald’s life and haunted his fiction