British Reserves

Recently, the British Library announced its 19th Century Historical Collection app for the iPad, which features scanned copies of more than a thousand nineteenth-century books—all of which are in the public domain—and includes classic novels as well as works on philosophy, science, and history. Original maps and illustrations are highlighted, as are marginalia and inscriptions […]

First Words

Earlier this month, the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute announced the completion of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, the result of ninety years of research on the language and dialects of ancient Mesopotamia. The work’s basic language, Akkadian, dates to the twenty-fourth century B.C., and the twenty-one volumes—the first of which was published in 1956—function more […]

The Exchange: Arthur Phillips

“The Tragedy of Arthur,” a novel by Arthur Phillips, is a bold and tangled work in two acts. The first is a faux-memoir, in which Phillips’s father, also an Arthur Phillips, has discovered a previously unknown Shakespeare play, also called “The Tragedy of Arthur.” Arthur Sr.—who happens to be a convicted forger—enlists Phillips’s help in […]

High Times

New York’s High Line doubled its size last week, expanding ten blocks north to West Thirtieth Street. During the expansion, the park’s staff shared videos, updates, and event information via the High Line Blog—including this video, featuring Organized C.H.A.O.S., a step team that performed June 16th, as part of the Step to the High Line […]

Cleveland Watches the Finals

Last night, when I heard the Dallas Mavericks had defeated the Miami Heat, four games to two, I cheered. I don’t know very much about basketball, and I didn’t follow the N.B.A. Finals. But I’m from Cleveland, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I will root for any team the Pittsburgh Steelers […]

A Tender Age

In her post introducing June’s Book Club selection, “House of Prayer No. 2,” by Mark Richard, Macy cites a passage that includes this sentence: Sometimes in the orange and grey dust when the world is empty, the child lies in the cold backyard grass and watches the thousand starlings swarm Dr. Jim’s chimneys, and the […]