Before the Civil War, the clerk was “a small but unusual phenomenon.” By the end of the 19th century, clerical workers were a social force to be reckoned with. This is the story of their rise.
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Posted inNonfiction, Story
Kitchen Rhythm: A Year in a Parisian Pâtisserie
An Oxford grad learns to navigate boiling sugar, sleep deprivation, and exacting pastry chefs with whom she can barely communicate.
Posted inNonfiction
The Gothic Life and Times of Horace Walpole
Two-hundred and fifty years ago, Horace Walpole published ‘The Castle of Otranto,’ a strange, campy book that’s widely considered to be the first Gothic novel. In real life, Walpole’s family was beset by tragedy and his life’s obsession was a Gothic castle called Strawberry Hill.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
‘I Would Prefer Not To’: The Origins of the White Collar Worker
Before the Civil War, the clerk was “a small but unusual phenomenon.” By the end of the 19th century, clerical workers were a social force to be reckoned with. This is the story of their rise.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Gothic Life and Times of Horace Walpole
Two-hundred and fifty years ago, Horace Walpole published ‘The Castle of Otranto,’ a strange, campy book that’s widely considered to be the first Gothic novel. In real life, Walpole’s family was beset by tragedy and his life’s obsession was a Gothic castle called Strawberry Hill.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Loving the Opera in HD
Once controversial, Metropolitan Opera broadcasts for movie-theater audiences have become a gateway for new (and returning) fans: A few years ago, I attended a Met production of Verdi’s Macbeth. Despite superb singing, the production felt disjointed, as if it could not contain both a medieval thane with tragic ambition and a 19th-century composer sounding an […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Tennessee Williams on His Women, His Writer’s Block, and Whether It All Mattered
Tennessee Williams tasked James Grissom with seeking out each of the women (and few men) who had inspired his work—Maureen Stapleton, Lillian Gish, Marlon Brando and others—so that he could ask them a question: had Tennessee Williams, or his work, ever mattered?
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Tennessee Williams on His Women, His Writer’s Block, and Whether It All Mattered
Tennessee Williams tasked James Grissom with seeking out each of the women (and few men) who had inspired his work—Maureen Stapleton, Lillian Gish, Marlon Brando and others—so that he could ask them a question: had Tennessee Williams, or his work, ever mattered?
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘The Greatest Catastrophe the World Has Ever Seen’
On the 100th anniversary of World War I, several new books examine how the global powers walked into it, and who really was to blame: Thus was unleashed the calamitous conflict that, more than any other series of events, has shaped the world ever since; without it we can doubt that communism would have taken […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
