THE RETICENT RADICAL

Baruch Spinoza's quiet revolution.

WHAT GOES AROUND

The stories we tell about female violence.

THE ART OF CHANGE

Thelma Goldens role in desegregating the art world.

MY WAITING LIST

I am happy to announce that I have opened a new waiting list, for people who have been trying to get on my regular waiting list. When and if there are openings on the regular list, those on the new list will be eligible to move into one of the open slots, after paying a transfer fee.

THE FRIENDSHIP CHALLENGE

How envy destroyed the perfect connection between two teen-age girls.

THE SPORTING SCENE: NO JOKE

Somehow, Nikola Joki¢ has become the world’s best basketball player.

Poor Houdini

Four very thin trees stand above their own reflections and hesitate, as cold girls do. She thinks of rhymes for girls do. Whirls through. Pearls anew. Use it in a sonnet? Eddy's mother lives by a lake. It is a gray: and glassy evening. Supper was all reminiscences, Eddy recalling slow white mists drifting over the schoolyard each day at five, when the chemical plant incinerated its Styrofoam, and how he broke his collarbone and no one believed him for three days, his mother at the head of the table smiling and continuing with her fruit cup, his brother sitting opposite with his head down, a man tall and thin as a door, closed like a door. He ate as if expecting more. Four, chore, whore, underscore ran through her mind perkily. She mumbled something, got up from the table, and left. Now, at the lake, no one swimming, she watches the water slide from slate to black.

MAD, CONCEITED, RIDICULOUS

Why Margaret Cavendish was considered both a genius and an eccentric.

DEPTH OF FIELD

\"Public Obscenities\" triumphs Off Broadway.

THE NEXT SCENE

Lucian Grainge helped the music industry survive file-sharing. Now he wants to do the same with A.I.

BURN NOTICE

What's really fuelling the wildfire crisis?

EVERY TEN-BEST LIST

SHOUTS & MURMURS

A SLIPPERY SLOPE

How a rural ski resort became embroiled in an international fraud.

Personal History – A New Life

Becoming a parent, ending a marriage.

NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD

The heroine of \"Tótem,\" a new film from the Mexican director Lila Avilés, is a girl by the name of Solecito (Naíma Sentíes), or Sol for short. We are never told her age: seven or eight, perhaps, though she's one of those naturally grave children who seem a little older and wiser than they ought-or would choose to be.

TONE CONTROL

The sane genius of Emily Mason.

DOUBLE VISION

The mystique of twins.

ACID REFLUX

When America first went tripping.

CAVE WOMAN

Beatriz Flamini liked solitude so much that she decided to live underground for five hundred days.

CRÈME DE LA CRÈME

Sofia Coppola’ path to filming gilded adolescence.

ANNALS OF POLITICS: RULING-CLASS RULES

How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy.

GOODYEAR

On tires, toenails, and walks with an old friend.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

As a way of launching the race for the Republican Presidential nomination, the Iowa and New Hampshire contests offer a neat thematic juxtaposition: in the Midwest, candidates fight for the social-conservative vote; in New England, for the support of small-business owners.

The Life of the Mother

A high-risk pregnancy in a climate of fear about abortion.

Broken and Rebuilt

Bijayini Satpathy and a new understanding of Indian classical dance.

IMPASSE

\"Prayer for the French Republic\" comes to Broadway.

GHOST TOWN

The return of \"True Detective,\" on HBO.

EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY

A Libyan can't quit London in Hisham Matar's \"My Friends.\"

WITCHY WOMEN

The surprising persistence of the witch trial.

IS A.I. THE DEATH OF I.P.?

The copyright wars, revised and expanded.