“Shy” starts out like a story about how trauma begets dysfunction. It’s much more complicated than that.

The Czech author, who died this week at 94, warned against the marginalization of literature and fought for its future.

A conversation with the author about his novel “The Light At the End of the World,” and catastrophe, conspiracy, and mythmaking in fiction.

Scientists disagree about what life on other planets even means. Would we know it when we saw it?

Rebecca May Johnson seeks to restore cooking to its rightful place as a form of knowledge, expressing pleasure, desire, and resistance.

Hawks may claim that uncompromising defense policies won the Cold War. But his pursuit of peace was more important.

A conversation with Colin Kaepernick on Black studies, white supremacy, and capitalism

A sociologist spoke with 50 gun sellers about 2020’s dramatic uptick in firearms sales and its effects.

“Arrangements in Blue” and “A Life of One’s Own” work through the puzzles of single life through art and music.

Centuries of history fed into Putin’s disastrous decision to go to war.

What do politicos turned authors know that we don’t?

Amis trusted you to keep pace with his wit, his bawdiness, his erudition. His work seems to say: You and me—we get it.

Danish design was a product of postwar social democracy.

Jess Row’s novel explores the aftermath of a young activist’s death.

Why memoirs of sickness and elusive diagnosis increasingly read like detective stories

Outbreaks of disease may have had a greater effect on the course of events than the actions and plans of humans.

The decline in his fiction over his lifetime was understandable. The mystery is why his worst journalism ever received such lavish praise.

“The Wager” is a story of resentment, insurrection, and a battle over the truth. Sound familiar?

A writer of haunting, uncategorizable songs, she once seemed poised for runaway fame. But only decades after she disappeared has her music found an audience.

Jeff Sharlet saw close up how the far right has used grief and bitterness to grow its ranks.