We’re eating alone more often than in any previous generation. But why should a meal on our own be uninspired? Why shouldn’t the French saying “life is too short to drink bad wine” still apply?
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Posted inReading List
Alternative Reality: An Alt-Weekly Reading List
Nine excellent stories discovered in U.S. alt-weekly newspapers.
Posted inFeature
Born to Be Eaten
What’s at stake in the fight over development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? A caribou herd, and a culture that relies on it.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
The Ladies Who Were Famous for Wanting to Be Left Alone
The Ladies of Llangollen fell in love, ran away together, and lived a scholarly life of “delicious seclusion” — secluded, that is, except for all the visitors.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
The Haväng Dolmen
A trip to a Swedish stone-age burial site gives an archaeologist too close a look at death.
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Science Fiction, Story
Working Through the Apocalypse: An Interview with Ling Ma
In Ling Ma’s “Severance” — a novel she began to write after getting laid off, while living partly on severance pay — the characters keep going to work, even though they know it’s the end of the world.
Posted inNonfiction
American Green
How did the plain green lawn become the central landscaping feature in America, and what is the ecological cost?
Posted inBooks, Culture, Nonfiction, Story
A Childhood in Cars
How one young man cut against the grain of American masculinity and freed himself from car culture.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
The End of Poker Night
Mindy Greenstein looks back on the gambling that was a big part of life with her Holocaust refugee parents.
Posted inArts & Culture, History, Science & Nature, Story
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Pearls
Born from irritation and intrusion, luminous and complex, surprisingly durable: pearls are rich with symbolism and saturated with pain.
