Dictionary of Untranslatables
A friend once remarked that the Korean language has no word for salad. Instead, it uses saleodu, a Korean-inflected version…
Matthew Battles
Matthew Battles is the author of Library: An Unquiet History. He has written about language, technology, and history for such publications as The American Scholar, The Boston Sunday Globe, and Harper’s.
Sendak in the Library
A few years ago, Maurice Sendak gave a talk at the Harvard Library where I worked. Having recently assisted on…
The Sense of an Ending
The Man Booker Prize-winning novel revolves around an unreliable narrator confronting secrets from his past.
Tove Jansson’s Art of Play
A sly — and sometimes dark — bohemianism infuses the grown-up fiction of the Moomintroll creator.
A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade
A group portrait of one of America’s most eccentric — and influential — circles of friends.