After a spate of trauma and loss, Maura Kelly retreats to the Hudson Valley where she is converted into a ‘nature person.’
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Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
My Grandfather’s Fateful Goodbye, Reimagined
Karissa Chen tries to reconstruct the moment her grandfather, at 19, left Shanghai for Taiwan on a supposed vacation—a decision that would alter his life forever.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Revisiting the Ghosts of Attica
A wrenching new book recounts the bloodiest prison battle in our history.
Posted inBooks, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Chasing the Harvest: ‘If You Want to Die, Stay at the Ranch’
In this oral history, a former sheepherder describes the loneliness and medical hardship he experienced while tending sheep in California’s Central Valley.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Is the Internet Changing Time?
“Fragments of the past are for the first time on tap, not stored away in boxes,” writes Laurence Scott.
Posted inNonfiction, Op-Ed, Story
What Thomas Jefferson Taught Me About Charlottesville and America
University of Virginia grad Joshua Adams believes that if you want to understand the recent violence there, look back at history and the school’s complicated founder.
Posted inBooks
Late in Life, Thoreau Became a Serious Darwinist
But he died before he could finish his book on natural history. As Emerson put it, Thoreau “depart[ed] out of Nature before… he has been really shown to his peers for what he is.”
Posted inUncategorized
Industrialization and the History of the Matzo Machine
For centuries matzo was a handmade specialty, carefully rolled into a thin, cratered moon shape and pricked with a fork. Today, many Orthodox communities still make this version — called shmurah — which is supervised by a rabbi from start to finish. But industrialization in the mid–nineteenth century forever changed the matzo industry. Historians trace the first […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
From a Hawk to a Dove
Vietnam Veteran Ray Cocks, who’d eagerly enlisted in 1967, was forever changed by the realities of war.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story
The Brief Career and Self-Imposed Exile of Jutta Hipp, Jazz Pianist
Europe’s “First Lady of Jazz” moved to New York in 1955, played for five more years, then disappeared — while royalty checks piled up with her record label.
