The Curious Engineer

The Marginalian

2016–2018

974 posts

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2018 229

December 2018

  1. The Best of Brain Pickings 2018
  2. In Praise of Idleness: Bertrand Russell on the Relationship Between Leisure and Social Justice
  3. Favorite Books of 2018
  4. Freedom and Creative Vitality in a Market Society: Ursula K. Le Guin on Saving Books from Profiteering and Commodification
  5. The Eternal Return: Nietzsche’s Brilliant Thought Experiment Illustrating the Key to Existential Contentment
  6. The Loveliest Children’s Books of 2018
  7. A 100-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor on How Books Save Lives
  8. The Art of Waiting: Reclaiming the Pleasures of Durational Being in an Instant Culture of Ceaseless Doing
  9. An Illustrated Celebration of the Rebels, Visionaries, and Fiercely Courageous World-Changers Who Won Women Political Power
  10. Hermann Hesse on How to Hear the Wisdom of the Inner Voice
  11. The Fish in the Stone: Zoë Keating Reads Rita Dove’s Ode to Deep Time
  12. Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert
  13. The Original Manifesto for Information Visualization and Pictorial Statistics: ISOTYPE Creator Otto Neurath’s Pioneering 1930 Visual Language
  14. An Illustrated Celebration of How Books Touch and Transform Us
  15. Cosmic Threads: A Solar System Quilt from 1876
  16. Anne Lamott on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Relationship Between Brokenness and Joy
  17. How to Break a Code: 100-Year-Old Insight from Cryptography Pioneers William and Elizebeth Friedman
  18. Against Common Sense: Vladimir Nabokov on the Wellspring of Wonder and Why the Belief in Goodness Is a Moral Obligation

November 2018

  1. Patti Smith Sings “The Tyger” and Reflects on William Blake’s Transcendent Legacy as a Guiding Sun in the Cosmos of Creativity
  2. George Sand’s Only Children’s Book: A Touching Parable of Choosing Kindness and Generosity Over Cynicism and Greed, with Stunning Illustrations by Russian Artist Gennady Spirin
  3. Incubation, Ideation, and the Art of Editing: Beethoven on Creativity
  4. A Velocity of Being: Illustrated Letters to Children about Why We Read by 121 of the Most Inspiring Humans in Our World
  5. Ursula K. Le Guin on Suffering and Getting to the Other Side of Pain
  6. Stranger in the Village: James Baldwin’s Prophetic Insight into Race and Reality, with a Shimmering Introduction by Gwendolyn Brooks
  7. Georgia O’Keeffe on the Art of Seeing
  8. How to Make Difficult Decisions: Benjamin Franklin’s Pioneering Pros and Cons Framework
  9. The Puzzle We Call Being: Walt Whitman on Listening to the Song of Existence, Animated
  10. Wordsworth on Genius and the Creative Responsibility of Elevating Taste
  11. G.K. Chesterton on How to Find Perspective in the Age of Opinion
  12. Dawn: A Vintage Watercolor Serenade to the World Waking Up
  13. Margaret Fuller on What Makes a Great Leader: Timeless Wisdom from the Founding Mother of American Feminism
  14. Elizabeth Gilbert Reads “The Early Hours” by Adam Zagajewski
  15. Figuring
  16. How to Be a Good Creature: Naturalist Sy Montgomery on What 13 Animals Taught Her About Otherness, Love, and Being Fully Human

October 2018

  1. Truth, Justice, and Public Good: Simone Weil on Political Manipulation, the Dangers of “For” and “Against,” and How to Save Thinking from Opinion
  2. Meeting Virginia Woolf
  3. How a Jellyfish and a Sea Slug Illuminate the Mystery of the Self
  4. Door: A Tender Illustrated Allegory of Self-Discovery and the Capacity for Joy
  5. Anne Lamott on Love, Despair, and Our Capacity for Change
  6. Frankenstein Author Mary Shelley on Nature and the Meaning of Happiness
  7. Rebecca Solnit on Rewriting the World’s Broken Stories and the Paradigm-Shifting Power of Calling Things by Their True Names
  8. Elizabeth Gilbert on Love, Loss, and How to Move Through Grief as Grief Moves Through You
  9. An Illustrated Field Guide to the Art, Science, and Joy of Tea
  10. The Dalai Lama on Science and Spirituality
  11. The Original Marriage of Equals: The Love Letters of Feminism Founding Mother Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Philosopher William Godwin
  12. The Mesmerizing Microscopy of Trees: Otherworldly Images Revealing the Cellular Structure of Wood Specimens
  13. Ursula K. Le Guin on Time, the Measure of Loyalty, and What Responsibility Really Means
  14. A Stunning Illustrated Celebration of the Wilderness and the Human Role in Nature Not as Conqueror but as Humble Witness
  15. Borges on Turning Trauma, Misfortune, and Humiliation into Raw Material for Art
  16. Pioneering Conservationist Mardy Murie on Nature, Human Nature, and the Wealth of the Wilderness
  17. Anton Chekhov’s 6 Rules for a Great Story
  18. Loving vs. Being in Love: Jane Welsh Carlyle on Navigating the Heart’s Contradictions
  19. Little Man, Little Man: James Baldwin’s Only Children’s Book, Celebrating the Art of Seeing and Black Children’s Self-Esteem

September 2018

  1. The Scientific Poetics of Affection: Lewis Thomas on Altruism and Why We Are Wired for Friendship
  2. The Integrity of Parting Ways: Rilke on Unwounding Separation and the Difficult Art of Reimagining Broken Relationships
  3. Presto & Zesto in Limboland: A Lovely and Unusual “New” Maurice Sendak Book Elegizing a Lost Friendship
  4. Adrienne Rich on Resistance and the Liberating Power of Storytelling
  5. Cybernetics Pioneer Norbert Wiener on the Malady of “Content” and How to Save Creative Culture from the Syphoning of Substance
  6. Beasts of India: Stunning Illustrations of Indigenous Animals Depicted in Various Tribal Art Traditions
  7. Physicist Alan Lightman on the Illusion of Absolute Rest
  8. We Grow Accustomed to the Dark: Emily Dickinson’s Stunning Ode to Resilience, Animated
  9. The Only Story in the World: John Steinbeck on Kindness, Good and Evil, the Wellspring of Good Writing
  10. Walt Whitman on Creativity
  11. Japanese Artist Ryota Kajita’s Otherworldly Photographs of Ice Formation in Alaska
  12. Philosopher Martin Buber on How Learning to Look at Trees Teaches Us to See Each Other More Clearly
  13. Toni Morrison on the Deepest Meaning of Freedom
  14. The Woman Who Smashed Codes: The Untold Story of Cryptography Pioneer Elizebeth Friedman
  15. You Belong Here: An Illustrated Antidote to Our Existential Homelessness
  16. Jeanette Winterson’s 10 Tips on Writing
  17. The Difficult Art of Giving Space in Love: Rilke on Freedom, Togetherness, and the Secret to a Good Marriage

August 2018

  1. What We Imagine Knowledge to Be: James Gleick Reads Elizabeth Bishop
  2. Against the Illusion of Separateness: Pablo Neruda’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
  3. Water: A Stunning Celebration of the Element of Life Based on Indian Folklore
  4. Literary Ecstasy: Virginia Woolf Describes a Psychedelic Experience
  5. Epictetus on Love and Loss: The Stoic Strategy for Surviving Heartbreak
  6. Van Gogh on the Beauty of Sorrow and the Enchantment of Storms, in Nature and in Life
  7. Why the Sea Is Blue: Rachel Carson on the Science and Splendor of the Marine Spectrum
  8. Stephen Hawking on What Makes a Good Theory and the Quest for a Theory of Everything
  9. The Great Polish Poet and Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz on Love
  10. Walt Whitman on the “Meaning” of Art and How to Best Access the Poetic
  11. King of the Sky: A Lyrical Illustrated Fable of Belonging and the Meaning of Home
  12. Polish Poet and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on Great Love
  13. Loneliness in Time: Physicist Freeman Dyson on Immigration and How Severing Our Connection to the Past Shallows Our Present and Hollows Our History
  14. Voltaire on the Art of Being Undefeated by Hardship
  15. Bluets: Maggie Nelson on the Color Blue as a Lens on Memory, Loneliness, and the Paradoxes of Love
  16. The Universe in Verse: Astrophysicist Natalie Batalha Reads Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence” and Tells a Lyrical Personal Story About Her Path to Science
  17. James Baldwin on Resisting the Mindless Majority, Not Running from Uncomfortable Realities, and What It Really Means to Grow Up
  18. Tiny, Perfect Things: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Presence

July 2018

  1. George Eliot on Form, Poetry, and How Art Reveals the Interrelated Parts of the Whole
  2. Tennessee Williams on Love and How the Very Thing Worth Saving Is the Thing That Will Save Us
  3. Walt Whitman on Democracy and Optimism as a Mighty Form of Resistance
  4. An Animated Field Guide to Black Holes and the Key Conundrum of Time
  5. Philosopher Martin Buber on Love and What It Means to Live in the Present
  6. William Blake Illustrates Pioneering Feminist and Political Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft’s Book of Moral Education for Children
  7. Stephen Hawking’s Mother on Her Son’s Singular Genius and How We Expand the Boundaries of Human Knowledge
  8. Iris Murdoch on Storytelling, Why Art Is Essential for Democracy, and the Key to Good Writing
  9. Oliver Sacks on Nature’s Beauty as a Portal to Deep Time and a Lens on the Interconnectedness of the Universe
  10. Kahlil Gibran on the Courage to Weather the Uncertainties of Love
  11. How to Change Your Mind: Michael Pollan on How the Science of Psychedelics Illuminates Consciousness, Mortality, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
  12. The Mystery and Might of Water
  13. Stephen Jay Gould’s Charming Poem for Oliver Sacks’s Birthday, Read by Bill Hayes
  14. An Illustrated Meditation on the Many Meanings and Manifestation of Love
  15. Pioneering Feminist Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft on Loneliness, Friendship, and the Courage of Unwavering Affection
  16. How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life
  17. From Immigrant to Inventor: The Great Serbian-American Scientist Michael Pupin on the Value of a Penniless Immigrant Boy Full of Promise

June 2018

  1. Seneca on Gratitude and What It Really Means to Be a Generous Human Being
  2. A Flash of Illumination on the Greyhound Bus: Physicist Freeman Dyson on Creative Breakthrough and the Unconscious Mind
  3. Cutting Greens: Terrance Hayes Reads Lucille Clifton’s Spare and Stunning Ode to the Kinship of All Creatures
  4. The Brilliant Deep: The Illustrated Story of the Man Who Set Out to Save the World’s Coral Reefs with Hammer and Glue
  5. ‘Frankenstein’ Author Mary Shelley on Creativity
  6. Rilke on the Lonely Patience of Creative Work
  7. Pi and the Meandering Paths of Rivers
  8. Little Panic: A Literary Laboratory Exploring What It Is Like to Live in the Stranglehold of Anxiety and What It Takes to Break Free
  9. Marcus Aurelius on How to Live Through Difficult Times
  10. Amanda Palmer and The Decomposers Cover Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” in Tribute to Rachel Carson
  11. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics Pioneer Norbert Wiener on Communication, Control, and the Morality of Our Machines
  12. 200 Years of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece as a Lens on Today’s Most Pressing Questions of Science, Ethics, and Human Creativity
  13. Walking the City with Jane: An Illustrated Celebration of Jane Jacobs and Her Legacy of Livable Cities
  14. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Explained in a Pioneering 1923 Silent Film
  15. Theodore Roosevelt on the Two Pillars of Good Citizenship and the Most Dangerous Enemy of Democracy
  16. Nature and the Serious Work of Joy
  17. Julián Is a Mermaid: A Tenderhearted Story of Identity, Belonging, and the Courage to Be Yourself
  18. How to Eat an Apricot: Diane Ackerman on Art, Science, and Wonder
  19. How to Exercise Like a Poet: The Walt Whitman Workout
  20. William James on Consciousness and the Four Features of Transcendent Experiences
  21. Be Still, Life: A Songlike Illustrated Invitation to Living with Presence
  22. Egon Schiele on What It Means to Be an Artist and Why Visionaries Always Come from the Minority

May 2018

  1. The Mangrove and the Meaning of Life: Annie Dillard on What Earth’s Most Otherworldly Trees Teach Us About Being Human
  2. The Universe in Verse: John Cameron Mitchell Reads Walt Whitman’s Beautiful Least Known Poem
  3. William James on Science and Spirituality, the Limits of Materialism, and the Existential Art of Assenting to the Universe
  4. How to Befriend the Universe: Philosopher and Comedian Emily Levine on the Art of Meeting Reality on Its Own Terms
  5. Pythagoras on the Purpose of Life and the Meaning of Wisdom
  6. Singularity: Poet Marie Howe’s Beautiful Tribute to Stephen Hawking and Our Belonging to the Universe
  7. The Trailblazing 18th-Century Woman of Letters Germaine de Staël on Ambition and the Crucial Difference Between Ego and Genius
  8. Two Hundred Years of Blue
  9. Life, Loss, and the Wisdom of Rivers
  10. Nabokov’s Synesthetic Alphabet: From the Weathered Wood of A to the Thundercloud of Z
  11. Optimism: A Poetic Stop-Motion Celebration of Nature’s Resilience and the Persistence of Life Against All Odds
  12. Pioneering Mathematician G.H. Hardy on How to Find Your Purpose and What Is Most Worth Aspiring for
  13. The Universe as an Infinite Storm of Beauty: John Muir on the Transcendent Interconnectedness of Nature
  14. Sojourns in the Parallel World: America Ferrera Reads Denise Levertov’s Ode to Our Ambivalent Relationship with Nature
  15. A Brave and Startling Truth: Maya Angelou’s Stunning Humanist Poem That Flew to Space, Inspired by Carl Sagan
  16. Reality, Representation, and the Search for Meaning: Argentine Artist Mirtha Dermisache’s Invented Graphic Languages
  17. Darkness in the Celestial Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf’s Arresting 1927 Account of a Total Solar Eclipse
  18. Walt Whitman’s Advice to the Young on the Building Blocks of Character and What It Takes to Be an Agent of Change
  19. Spontaneity and the Search for Meaning: Erich Fromm on the Wellspring of Individuality, Creativity, and Love
  20. Create Dangerously: Albert Camus on the Power of Art as Resistance and Creativity as an Instrument of Freedom
  21. Pioneering Jamaican-American Illustrator and Designer Jacqueline Ayer’s Lovely Vintage Children’s Book About Loss, Hope, and Homecoming, Inspired by Thailand
  22. Thomas Carlyle on What Self-Help Really Means and the Healing Power of Love in Moments of Blackest Despair

April 2018

  1. Theodore Roosevelt on the Cowardice of Cynicism and the Courage to Create Rather Than Tear Down
  2. J.D. McClatchy on the Contrast and Complementarity of Desire and Love
  3. Three Balls of Wool: An Illustrated Celebration of Nonconformity and the Courage to Remake Society’s Givens
  4. Hymn to Time: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Ode to the Most Mysterious Dimension of Being
  5. Anna Deavere Smith on the Importance of Bringing Light to History’s Shadows and Resisting the Destructive Patterns Handed Down to Us by Our Invisible Pasts
  6. Esperanza Spalding Performs William Blake’s Short Existential Poem “The Fly”
  7. Evolutionary Biologist Lynn Margulis on the Spirituality of Science and the Interconnectedness of Life Across Time, Space, and Species
  8. Trailblazing Scottish Mountaineer and Poet Nan Shepherd on the Transcendent Rewards of Walking and What Makes for an Ideal Walking Companion
  9. The Paradox of Freedom: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Moral Aloneness and Our Mightiest Antidote to Terror
  10. Rilke on Inspiration and the Combinatorial Nature of Creativity
  11. Christopher Hitchens on Animal Rights, Our Human Hubris, and the Lesser Appreciated Moral of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”
  12. The Hour of Land: Terry Tempest Williams on the Responsibility of Awe and the Wilderness as an Antidote to the War Within Ourselves
  13. Stunning, Sensual Illustrations for a Rare 1913 Edition of Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ by English Artist Margaret C. Cook
  14. Subjectifying the Universe: Ursula K. Le Guin on Science and Poetry as Complementary Modes of Comprehending and Tending to the Natural World
  15. An Axiom of Feeling: Werner Herzog on the Absolute, the Sublime, and Ecstatic Truth
  16. Carl Sagan on Mystery, Why Common Sense Blinds Us to the Universe, and How to Live with the Unknown
  17. Meryl Streep Reads “Morning Song” by Sylvia Plath
  18. The Art of Sympathetic Enthusiasm: Goethe on the Only Opinion Worth Voicing About Another’s Life and Creative Labor
  19. The Habits of Light: A Celebration of Pioneering Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Whose Calculations Proved That the Universe Is Expanding
  20. Audre Lorde on Kinship Across Difference and the Importance of Unity Within Movements for Equality and Social Change

March 2018

  1. Jerome by Heart: A Tender Illustrated Celebration of Love Beyond Labels
  2. Alan Lightman on the Longing for Absolutes in a Relative World and What Gives Lasting Meaning to Our Lives
  3. How a Hungarian Teenager Revolutionized Mathematics and Equipped Einstein with the Building Blocks of Relativity
  4. Nietzsche on Truth, Lies, the Power and Peril of Metaphor, and How We Use Language to Reveal and Conceal Reality
  5. Regina Spektor Reads “The Everyday Enchantment of Music” by Mark Strand
  6. Chiura Obata’s Stunning Paintings of Yosemite
  7. Geometry and the Art of Seeing: Iron & Wine Reads Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Love Sonnet to Euclid
  8. Queen Mary’s Dollhouse and the Lost Vita Sackville-West Children’s Story That May Have Inspired Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’
  9. The Living Mountain: Pioneering Scottish Mountaineer and Poet Nan Shepherd’s Forgotten Masterpiece About Our Relationship with Nature
  10. I and Thou: Philosopher Martin Buber on the Art of Relationship and What Makes Us Real to One Another
  11. John Updike’s Playful and Profound Ode to the Neutrino, Read by “Humans of New York” Creator Brandon Stanton
  12. Stephen Hawking on the Meaning of the Universe
  13. The Hidden Lives of Owls
  14. How New York Breaks Your Heart: A Photographic Elegy for the City of Electric Beauty with an Edge of Sorrow
  15. Hannah Arendt on Action and the Pursuit of Happiness
  16. Carl Sagan on the Enchantment of Chemistry, with Stunning Illustrations by Artist Vivian Torrence
  17. Zadie Smith on What Writers Can Learn from Some of History’s Greatest Dancers
  18. Thoreau on Nature as Prayer
  19. Bear and Wolf: A Tender Illustrated Fable of Walking Side by Side in Otherness
  20. Nobel Laureate André Gide on the Five Elements of a Great Work of Art
  21. Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Happiness as a Moral Obligation
  22. Neither Victims Nor Executioners: Albert Camus on the Antidote to Violence
  23. A Burst of Light: Audre Lorde on Turning Fear Into Fire

February 2018

  1. Against Busyness and Surfaces: Emerson on Living with Presence and Authenticity
  2. Sylvia Beach and the World’s First International Writers’ Protest
  3. An Evolutionary Anatomy of Affect: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on How and Why We Feel What We Feel
  4. The Continuous Thread of Revelation: Eudora Welty on Writing, Time, and Embracing the Nonlinearity of How We Become Who We Are
  5. The Temple of Knowledge: An Animated Celebration of How Libraries Change Lives
  6. A Placid Ecstasy: Walt Whitman’s Most Direct Reflection on Happiness
  7. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dag Hammarskjöld on Love, What It Means to Be Yourself, and How to Live with an Openness to Life
  8. Werner Heisenberg Falls in Love: The Love Letters of the Nobel-Winning Pioneer of Quantum Mechanics and Originator of the Uncertainty Principle
  9. Nietzsche on Depression and the Rehabilitation of Hope
  10. The Art of Receptivity: Hilton Als on Love
  11. Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair
  12. Literary Witches: An Illustrated Celebration of Trailblazing Women Writers Who Have Enchanted and Transformed the World
  13. How to Apprehend Reality as It Really Is: Thoreau on Knowing vs. Seeing
  14. Eleven Kinds of Blue: Werner’s Pioneering 19th-Century Nomenclature of the Colors, Beloved by Darwin
  15. Conversations with the Earth: Geologist Hans Cloos on the Complementarity of Art and Science in Illuminating the Splendor of Nature and Reality
  16. I Am Loved: Nikki Giovanni’s Poems for Kids, Selected and Illustrated by Beloved Nonagenarian Artist Ashley Bryan
  17. Nobel-Winning Physicist Niels Bohr on Subjective vs. Objective Reality and the Uses of Religion in a Secular World

January 2018

  1. Ursula K. Le Guin on Art, Storytelling, and the Power of Language to Transform and Redeem
  2. “A Wrinkle in Time” Author Madeleine L’Engle on Self-Consciousness and the Wellspring of Creativity
  3. Ursula K. Le Guin on Busyness and the Creative Life
  4. Walt Whitman on the Splendor of Winter Beaches and How Art Imbues Life’s Bleakest Moments with Beauty
  5. If Apples Had Teeth: Shirley and Milton Glaser’s Lovely Vintage Children’s Book About Questioning the Way Things Are
  6. Writing and the Threshold Life: Jane Hirshfield on How the Liminal Liberates Us from the Prison of the Self
  7. T.S. Eliot on Writing: His Warm and Wry Letter of Advice to a Sixteen-Year-Old Girl Aspiring to Become a Writer
  8. From Euclid to Equality: Mathematician Lillian Lieber on How the Greatest Creative Revolution in Mathematics Illuminates the Core Ideals of Social Justice and Democracy
  9. The Building Blocks of Personhood: Oliver Sacks on Neurocognitive Pillar of What Makes Us Who We Are
  10. W.H. Auden on the Political Power of Art and the Crucial Difference Between Party Issues and Revolutionary Issues
  11. Walking as Creative Fuel: A Splendid 1913 Celebration of How Solitary Walks Enliven “The Country of the Mind”
  12. Blob: An Irreverent and Insightful Modern Fable About Beauty, Ugliness, the Paths to Acceptance, and How Admiration Hijacks Our Sense of Self
  13. The World’s Most Lyrical Footnote: Physicist Richard Feynman on the Life-Expanding Common Ground Between the Scientific and the Poetic Worldviews
  14. Germaine de Staël’s Guide to Haters: The First Modern Woman on Meritocracy, the Psychology of Why the Masses Rejoice in Tearing Down Successful Individuals, and the Only True Measure of Genius
  15. This Book Is a Planetarium: A Pop-Up Masterpiece Translating the Laws of Physics into Playful and Poetic Tangibility
  16. A Winter Walk with Thoreau: The Transcendentalist Way of Finding Inner Warmth in the Cold Season
  17. The Wonders of Possibility: Lewis Thomas on Our Human Potential and Our Cosmic Responsibility to the Planet and to Ourselves
  18. Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos: An Illustrated Celebration of How the Pioneering Artist’s Love of Animals Shaped Her Character
  19. D.H. Lawrence on the Antidote to the Malady of Materialism
  20. A Gentle Corrective for the Epidemic of Identity Politics Turning Us on Each Other and on Ourselves

2017 256

December 2017

  1. The Best of Brain Pickings 2017
  2. Inner Sanity Amid World Chaos: The Young Alan Watts on What Makes the Human Struggle Bearable, in a Touching Letter to His Parents
  3. The Consolations of the Telescopic Perspective in Disorienting Times
  4. Walt Whitman, Shortly After His Paralytic Stroke, on What Makes Life Worth Living
  5. Flatland Revisited: A Lovely New Edition of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Classic 1884 Allegory of Expanding Our Perspective
  6. The 7 Loveliest Children’s Books of 2017
  7. 7 Favorite Science Books of 2017
  8. On a Magical Do-Nothing Day: A Lovely Illustrated Ode to the Nourishment of Nature and the Art of Solitude in the Age of Screens
  9. Jad Abumrad Reads an Ode to the Glory of Tiny Creatures and Celebrates His Mother’s Scientific Persistence
  10. The Heartening Illustrated Story of How Blues Pioneer Muddy Waters Transmuted Loss and Loneliness into Music That Changed History
  11. Code Girls: The Untold Story of the Women Cryptographers Who Fought WWII at the Intersection of Language and Mathematics
  12. The Songs of Trees: A Biologist’s Lyrical Ode to How Relationships Weave the Fabric of Life
  13. The Dialogues: Illustrated Conversations About the Most Thrilling Frontiers of Science by Theoretical Physicist and Self-Taught Artist Clifford Johnson
  14. Ursula K. Le Guin on Anger
  15. Margaret Fuller on the Power of Music
  16. The Art of Being Alone: May Sarton’s Stunning 1938 Ode to Solitude

November 2017

  1. On the Tranquility of Mind: Seneca on Resilience, the Trap of Power and Prestige, and How to Calibrate Our Ambitions for Maximum Contentment
  2. Here We Are: Oliver Jeffers’s Warm Illustrated Field Guide to Living Together on Our Pale Blue Dot
  3. Pioneering Physicist Enrico Fermi on the “Utility” of Science, the Aim of Knowledge, and Our Ultimate Responsibility to Nature
  4. Neuroscientist Christof Koch on Free Will
  5. Descartes on Wonderment
  6. Amanda Palmer Reads “Happiness” by Jane Kenyon
  7. Walt Whitman on Beethoven and Music as the Profoundest Expression of Nature
  8. How Pioneering Firefighter Brenda Berkman Won Women’s Right to Heroism
  9. Technology, Wisdom, and the Difficult Art of Civilizational Self-Awareness: Thomas Merton’s Beautiful Letter of Appreciation to Rachel Carson for Catalyzing the Environmental Movement
  10. Between Sinew and Spirit: Are You a Body with a Mind or a Mind with a Body?
  11. Oliver Sacks on the Three Essential Elements of Creativity
  12. Carl Sagan on the Power of Books and Reading as the Path to Democracy
  13. The Wisdom of Trees: Walt Whitman on What Our Silent Friends Teach Us About Being Rather Than Seeming

October 2017

  1. Great Writers on the Letters of the Alphabet, Illustrated by David Hockney
  2. Love Found: A Diverse Illustrated Collection of Classic Poems Celebrating Desire, Longing, and Devotion
  3. An Ode to the Number Pi by Nobel-Winning Polish Poet Wisława Szymborska
  4. Pioneering Education Reformer Elizabeth Peabody on the True Object of Study
  5. Meet Cipe Pineles: The Remarkable Life and Illustrated Recipes of the Forgotten Pioneer Who Blazed the Way for Women in Design and Publishing
  6. An Alternative View of Human Nature: Rebecca Solnit on Crisis as a Catalyst for Dignity, Agency, and Human Goodness
  7. Big Wolf & Little Wolf: A Tender Tale of Loneliness, Belonging, and How Friendship Transforms Us
  8. A Life of One’s Own: A Brilliant Young Woman’s Forgotten Field Guide to the Art of Knowing What You Really Want
  9. W.E.B. Du Bois’s Little-Known, Arresting Modernist Data Visualizations of Black Life for the World’s Fair of 1900
  10. The Five Invitations: What Thousands of People’s Deathbed Reflections Reveal About the Building Blocks of a Life Worth Living
  11. The Little-Known Visual Art of E.E. Cummings
  12. Existential Psychologist Rollo May on Freedom and the Significance of the Pause
  13. Poetry and the Revolution of Being: Jane Hirshfield on How Great Art Transforms Us
  14. Florence Nightingale Visits a Mosque: The Founder of Modern Nursing on Women, Islam, and Religion’s Power Structures

September 2017

  1. Having It Out with Melancholy: Amanda Palmer Reads Jane Kenyon’s Stunning Poem About Living to the Other Side of Depression
  2. On Saying “I Love You” Only When You Mean It: Robert Browning on Protecting the Sincerity of Sentiment from Desecration by Misuse
  3. The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
  4. The Art of Living with Wide-Open Consciousness: Alice James on Attentiveness as the Pulse-Beat of Art
  5. Caitlin Moran on Fighting the Cowardice of Cynicism
  6. Rachel Carson on Science and Our Spiritual Bond with Nature
  7. How to Take Fate by the Throat: Beethoven on Creative Vitality and Resilience in the Face of Suffering
  8. The Search for a New Humility: Václav Havel on Reclaiming Our Human Interconnectedness in a Globalized Yet Divided World
  9. Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the Dangerous Myth of the Suffering Artist and What Makes Life Worth Living
  10. The Vampire Problem: The Paradoxical Psychology of Why It Is So Hard to Change
  11. Anatomy of Hatred: The Paradoxical Psychology of How That Which Repels Us Binds Us
  12. Trailblazing Astronomer Maria Mitchell on How We Co-Create Each Other and Recreate Ourselves Through Friendship
  13. How to Break Up Like a Poet: Edna St. Vincent Millay and the Art of the Kind, Clean Break
  14. How We Bridge the Real and the Ideal: Frederick Douglass on Art as a Tool of Constructive Self-Criticism and a Force of Cultural Progress
  15. The Forgotten Visionary Richard Jefferies on Nature as a Portal to Self-Transcendence
  16. Empathy Is a Clock That Ticks in the Consciousness of Another: The Science of How Our Social Interactions Shape Our Experience of Time

August 2017

  1. Sam Shepard in Praise of Writing Letters as an Incomparable Art of Human Connection and a Creative Practice
  2. The Paper-Flower Tree: An Illustrated Ode to the Courage of Withstanding Cynicism and the Generative Power of the Affectionate Imagination
  3. Rachel Carson on Writing and the Loneliness of Creative Work
  4. A Stoic’s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety
  5. Margaret Fuller on the Revitalizing Power and Spiritual Rewards of a Seaside Vacation
  6. Answers in Progress: Amiri Baraka’s Lyrical Manifesto for Life
  7. Gauguin’s Stirring First-Hand Account of What Actually Happened the Night Van Gogh Cut off His Own Ear
  8. The Haunted Mind: Nathaniel Hawthorne on the Edges of Consciousness Illuminate Time and Eternity
  9. The Creative Tension Between Vitality and Fatality: Illuminating the Mystery of Sylvia Plath Through Her Striking Never-Before-Revealed Visual Art
  10. John Quincy Adams on Efficiency vs. Effectiveness, the Proper Aim of Ambition, and His Daily Routine
  11. Sun and Moon: Stunning Illustrations of Celestial Myths by Ten of India’s Greatest Indigenous Artists
  12. The Terror Within and the Evil Without: James Baldwin on Our Capacity for Transformation as Individuals and Nations
  13. 91-Year-Old Lebanese-American Poet, Philosopher, and Painter Etel Adnan on Memory, the Self, and the Universe
  14. What to Look for During a Total Solar Eclipse: Mabel Loomis Todd’s Poetic 19th-Century Guide to Totality, with Help from Emily Dickinson
  15. An Illustrated Fictional Day in the Real Lives of Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein
  16. How to Live to the Full While Dying: The Extraordinary Diary of Alice James, William and Henry James’s Underappreciated Sister
  17. Sam Shepard in Love, on Love
  18. The Blue Songbird: A Tenderhearted and Lyrical Parable About Finding Your Voice and Coming Home to Yourself
  19. Into the Chute of Time: Annie Dillard on the Stunning Otherworldliness of a Total Solar Eclipse

July 2017

  1. Sir Thomas Browne on the Transcendent Torture of Romantic Friendship
  2. How Bach Will Save Your Soul: German Philosopher Josef Pieper on the Hidden Source of Music’s Supreme Power
  3. Advice to the Young from Pioneering Astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Who Discovered the Composition of the Universe
  4. Albert Camus on the Three Antidotes to the Absurdity of Life
  5. The Drift Called the Infinite: Emily Dickinson on Making Sense of Loss
  6. Memory and the Value of the Forgotten
  7. When Things Fall Apart: Tibetan Buddhist Nun and Teacher Pema Chödrön on Transformation Through Difficult Times
  8. The World’s First Celestial Spectator Sport: Astronomer Maria Mitchell’s Stunning Account of the 1869 Total Solar Eclipse
  9. Thoreau on Writing and the Splendors of Mystery in an Age of Knowledge
  10. A Bioluminescent Wonder: Rachel Carson on the Art of Illuminating Nature Beyond Scientific Fact
  11. How to Live with Death
  12. Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Love and the Seductions of Honesty
  13. Frida Kahlo on the Meanings of the Colors
  14. Good Sense vs. Free Hope: Margaret Fuller on Reaping Wonder from Everyday Reality
  15. Kafka on the Power of Music and the Point of Making Art

June 2017

  1. School Prayer: Diane Ackerman’s Poetic Invitation to Attentive Presence as a Means of Transcendence and Secular Spirituality
  2. You Are Not the Target: Laura Huxley on Course-Correcting the Paths of Love and Not-Love
  3. The Meaning of Life in a Muskrat: Loren Eiseley on Reclaiming Our Sense of the Miraculous
  4. Legendary Cosmologist Martin Rees on Science, Religion, and the Future of Post-Human Intelligence
  5. The Stars: A Mythopoeic Masterpiece Serenading the Night Sky Through Myths and Stories from Around the World
  6. Wallace Stevens on Reality, Creativity, and Our Greatest Self-Protection from the Pressure of the News
  7. The Topography of Tears: A Stunning Aerial Tour of the Landscape of Human Emotion Through an Optical Microscope
  8. Albert Einstein on the Interconnectedness of Our Fates and Our Mightiest Counterforce Against Injustice
  9. The Paradox of “Finding Yourself”
  10. Book Power: Gwendolyn Brooks’s Forgotten 1969 Ode to Why We Read
  11. Beethoven and the Crucial Difference Between Genius and Talent
  12. Trailblazing Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Science, Spirituality, and the Conquest of Truth
  13. Alain de Botton on Infatuation
  14. Jeanette Winterson on How Art and Storytelling Redeem Our Inner Lives

May 2017

  1. Freedom and Destiny: Rollo May on the Value of Despair as a Portal to Joy
  2. The Universe in Verse 2017: Full Show
  3. Seneca on True and False Friendship
  4. Elie Wiesel on the Loneliness of Leadership, How Our Questions Unite Us, and How Our Answers Divide Us
  5. Three Worlds: Composer Max Richter Brings Virginia Woolf’s Most Beloved Writing to Sonic Life
  6. Billy Collins’s Advice to Writers
  7. Neuroscientist Christof Koch on How the “Qualia” of Our Experience Illuminate the Central Mystery of Consciousness
  8. Anna Deavere Smith on How to Break the Paradox of Procrastination
  9. The Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are: James Baldwin on the Empathic Rewards of Reading and What It Means to Be an Artist
  10. A Laboratory for Feeling and Time: Pioneering Philosopher Susanne Langer on What Gives Music Its Power and How It Illuminates the Other Arts
  11. A “Yellow Submarine” Love Story
  12. Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Forgotten Treasure at the Intersection of Science and Poetry
  13. Power and Tenderness: Robert Penn Warren on Democracy, Art, and the Integrity of the Self
  14. Beethoven’s Advice on Being an Artist: His Touching Letter to a Little Girl Who Sent Him Fan Mail
  15. The Venus Hottentot: Elizabeth Alexander Reads Her Stirring Poem About the Roots of Racism and the Misuses of Science
  16. Speech, Action, and the Human Condition: Hannah Arendt on How We Invent Ourselves and Reinvent the World
  17. Don Giovanni and the Universe: Aldous Huxley on How the Moon Illuminates the Complementarity of Spirituality and Science
  18. A Responsibility to Light: An Illustrated Manifesto for Creative Resilience and the Artist’s Duty in Dark Times
  19. The Universe in Verse: Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith Reads from “Life on Mars”
  20. Bertolt: An Uncommonly Tender Illustrated Story about Love, Loss, the Life-Saving Power of Trees, and Art of Savoring Unlonely Solitude
  21. Love and Will: The Great Existential Psychologist Rollo May on Apathy, Transcendence, and Our Human Task in Times of Radical Transition
  22. Stitching a Supernova: A Needlepoint Celebration of Science by Pioneering Astronomer Cecilia Payne
  23. Go the Way Your Blood Beats: James Baldwin on Love, the Trap of Labels, and His Liberating Advice on Coming Out
  24. We Are Listening: Diane Ackerman’s Ode to the Search for Life Beyond Earth and Our Longing for Cosmic Companionship
  25. Bertrand Russell on the Two Types of Knowledge and What Makes a Fulfilling Life
  26. Loren Eiseley on the Relationship Between Nature and Human Nature
  27. The Gold Leaf: An Antidote to Our Selfish Impulses in an Enchanting Modern Fable about Kindness
  28. Emerson on Individual Integrity and Resisting the Tyranny of the Masses
  29. Rosanne Cash on How Science Saved Her Life, the Source of Every Artist’s Power, and Her Beautiful Reading of Adrienne Rich’s Tribute to Marie Curie
  30. Seneca on Grief and the Key to Resilience in the Face of Loss: An Extraordinary Letter to His Mother
  31. Hannah Arendt on Science, the Value of Space Exploration, and How Our Cosmic Aspirations Illuminate the Human Condition

April 2017

  1. Sarah Jones Performs an Astonishing Chorus-of-Humanity Tribute to Jane Goodall
  2. Stunning Drawings of Seaweed from a Book by Self-Taught Victorian Marine Biologist Margaret Gatty
  3. Planetarium: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads Adrienne Rich’s Tribute to Trailblazing Women in Science
  4. Erich Fromm on What Self-Love Really Means
  5. The Mushroom Hunters: Neil Gaiman’s Feminist Poem About Science, Read by Amanda Palmer
  6. Inner Preacher vs. Inner Teacher: Ursula K. Le Guin on Meaning-Making and the Artist’s Task
  7. Holocaust Survivor Primo Levi on Human Nature, Happiness and Unhappiness, and the Interconnectedness of Our Fates
  8. Meryl Streep Sings Her Mother’s Lullaby
  9. The Founding Father of Neuroscience on Solitude, the Importance of Science in a Nation’s Greatness, and the Ideal Social Environment for Intellectual Achievement
  10. Gwendolyn Brooks on Vulnerability as Strength and Her Advice to Writers
  11. Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy on the Unknown, the Horizons of the Knowable, and Why the Cross-Pollination of Disciplines is the Seedbed of Truth
  12. Poetry as Protest and Sanctuary: Jane Hirshfield’s Magnificent Poem Against the Silencing of Science and the Assault on Nature
  13. Kierkegaard on Time, the Fullness of the Moment, and How to Bridge the Ephemeral with the Eternal
  14. How to Tell a True Tale: Neil Gaiman on What Makes a Great Personal Story
  15. The Ethics of Belief: The Great English Mathematician and Philosopher William Kingdon Clifford on the Discipline of Doubt and How We Can Trust a Truth
  16. Ursula K. Le Guin on Redeeming the Imagination from the Commodification of Creativity and How Storytelling Teaches Us to Assemble Ourselves
  17. Paul Gauguin’s Advice on Overcoming Rejection, Breaking Free of Public Opinion, and Staying True to Your Creative Vision
  18. Poems of Space: Pioneering Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell Reads “Halley’s Comet” by Stanley Kunitz
  19. Hourglass: Dani Shapiro on Time, Memory, Marriage, and What Makes Us Who We Are
  20. Hallelujah Anyway: Anne Lamott on Reclaiming Mercy and Forgiveness as the Root of Self-Respect in a Vengeful World
  21. An 8-Year-Old Girl’s Poetic Tribute to Newton
  22. Beloved Lebanese-American Poet and Philosopher Kahlil Gibran on America, New York, and Jewishness
  23. Cynthia Nixon Reads Emily Dickinson’s “While I Was Fearing It, It Came”
  24. The Island of the Colorblind: Oliver Sacks on the Dignity of Difference
  25. Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: A Lovely Children’s Book About the World’s First Computer Programmer
  26. Erich Fromm’s 6 Rules of Listening: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist on the Art of Unselfish Understanding
  27. Elizabeth Alexander on How Great Artists Orient Themselves to Light of the World
  28. Hannah Arendt on Human Nature vs. Culture, What Equality Really Means, and How Our Language Confers Reality Upon Our Experience
  29. The Nothingness of Personality: Young Borges on the Self
  30. Working Together: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s Beautiful Ode to Our Mutuality with the World

March 2017

  1. Descartes on Opinion vs. Reason, the Key to a Wakeful Mind, and the Discipline of Critical Introspection
  2. Mathematician Lillian Lieber on Infinity, Art, Science, the Meaning of Freedom, and What It Takes to Be a Finite But Complete Human Being
  3. Vincent van Gogh on the Psychological Rewards of Japanese Art
  4. The Trailblazing 18th-Century French Mathematician Émilie du Châtelet on Jealousy and the Metaphysics of Love
  5. Our Smallness and the Cosmic Scale: How Big the Universe Is Relative to Us, Animated
  6. The Heroism of Being a Contrarian: Jacob Bronowski on the Essential Character Trait of the Creative Person
  7. The Creative Power of Uncertainty: Polish Poet Wisława Szymborska’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
  8. This Is a Poem That Heals Fish: An Almost Unbearably Wonderful Picture-Book About How Poetry Works Its Magic
  9. Erich Fromm on the Key to Sanity
  10. The Measure of All Things: How Two French Astronomers Nearly Lost Their Lives Revolutionizing the World with the Invention of the Meter
  11. Agnes Martin on Our Greatest Obstacle to Happiness and How to Transcend It
  12. Six Dots: The Remarkable Life and Legacy of Child Inventor Louis Braille, Illustrated
  13. Anthony Burgess on What Gives Art and Science Their Immeasurable Value
  14. Rebecca Solnit on Breaking Silence as Our Mightiest Weapon Against Oppression
  15. Diseases of the Will: Neuroscience Founding Father Santiago Ramón y Cajal on the Six Psychological Flaws That Keep the Gifted from Living Up to Their Gift
  16. The Telling: An Unusual and Profound 1967 Manifesto for Truth
  17. Artist Anne Truitt on the Transcendent Sense of “Enough” and the Epiphany That Revealed to Her the Purpose of Art
  18. Hooked on the Heavens: How Caroline Herschel, the First Professional Woman Astronomer, Nearly Died by Meathook in the Name of Science
  19. Rebecca West on Storytelling as a Survival Mechanism and How Art Transforms Mere Existence into Meaningful Being
  20. How to Live Life with Fantastic Aliveness: Remembering Amy Krouse Rosenthal
  21. Einstein’s Remarkable Letter to a Grief-Stricken Father Who Had Just Lost His Son
  22. Living and Loving Through Loss: Beautiful Letters of Consolation from Great Artists, Writers, and Scientists
  23. How I Fell in Love with Marianne Moore: Or, Elizabeth Bishop on What Her Eccentric Mentor Taught Her About Writing
  24. Atom, Archetype, and the Invention of Synchronicity: How Iconic Psychiatrist Carl Jung and Nobel-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli Bridged Mind and Matter
  25. Virginia Woolf on the Defiant Truthfulness of the Soul and Our Elemental Human Need for Communication
  26. Inside Oliver Sacks’s Creative Process: The Beloved Writer’s Never-Before-Seen Manuscripts, Brainstorm Sheets, and Notes on Writing, Creativity, and the Brain
  27. The Great Indian Poet and Philosopher Tagore on Truth, Human Nature, and the Interdependence of Existence
  28. Hermann Hesse on Little Joys, Breaking the Trance of Busyness, and the Most Important Habit for Living with Presence
  29. Forms of Love: Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on the Deeper Significance of Our Political Emotions
  30. Are You an Echo: The Remarkable Story of the Forgotten Young Woman Who Became Japan’s Most Beloved Children’s Poet
  31. Simone de Beauvoir on the Artist’s Task to Liberate the Present from the Past
  32. Beethoven’s Lifestyle Regimen and the Secret to His Superhuman Vitality
  33. The Poetics of Protest and Prayer: Mary Ruefle on the Different Powers of the Voice Raised and the Voice Lowered

February 2017

  1. Undersea: Rachel Carson’s Lyrical and Revolutionary 1937 Masterpiece Inviting Humans to Explore Earth from the Perspective of Other Creatures
  2. Friend or Foe?: A Lovely Illustrated Fable About Making Sense of Otherness
  3. John Steinbeck on the Loneliness of Success and His Surprising Source of Self-Salvation
  4. The Tragic Heroism of Hopefulness: The Myth of Sisyphus in a Gorgeous 1974 Oscar-Nominated Hungarian Animation
  5. Rebecca West on Survival, the Redemption of Suffering, and the Life-Saving Will to Keep Walking the Road to Ourselves
  6. How a Synesthete Experiences Bach: An Empathic Journey into Sound Through Minimalist Motion, Shape, and Color
  7. Beautiful Brain: The Stunning Drawings of Neuroscience Founding Father Santiago Ramón y Cajal
  8. How the French Mathematician Sophie Germain Paved the Way for Women in Science and Endeavored to Save Gauss’s Life
  9. Bruce Lee’s Never Before Revealed Letters to Himself About Authenticity, Personal Development, and the Measure of Success
  10. Love Beyond Label: The Tender Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms
  11. Nina Simone on Time
  12. How to Know Yourself: Poet Laura Riding’s Extraordinary 1930 Letters to an 8-Year-Old Girl
  13. The Binary Code of Body and Spirit: Computing Pioneer Alan Turing on Mortality
  14. Audre Lorde on the Indivisibility of Identity and the Importance of Arts Education and Arts Funding
  15. Alchemy and the Transmutation of Ignorance Into Truth: Lewis Thomas’s Prescient 1983 Manifesto for the Humanity-Saving Value of Social Science
  16. William Faulkner on What Sherwood Anderson Taught Him About Writing, the Artist’s Task, and Being an American
  17. Insomniac City: Bill Hayes’s Extraordinary Love Letter to New York, Oliver Sacks, and Love Itself
  18. Italo Calvino on Racial Justice: The Beloved Italian Writer’s Stirring Account of the Early Civil Rights Movement and His Encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr.
  19. A Cinematic Love Letter to the Wilderness and John Muir’s Legacy
  20. Song of Two Worlds: Alan Lightman’s Poetic Ode to Science, the Unknown, and Our Search for Meaning, Illustrated by a Teenager in India
  21. To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: Pioneering Psychotherapist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, the Loneliness of Mental Illness, and the Healing Power of Believing in a Person’s Inextinguishable Inner Light
  22. Rachel Carson’s Brave and Prescient 1953 Letter Against the Government’s Assault on Science and Nature
  23. The Joy of Suffering Overcome: Young Beethoven’s Stirring Letter to His Brothers About the Loneliness of Living with Deafness and How Music Saved His Life
  24. The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt on the Normalization of Human Wickedness and Our Only Effective Antidote to It
  25. May Sarton on the Artist’s Duty to Contact the Timeless in Tumultuous Times
  26. Sociologist Anne Wortham on Authenticity, the Real Meaning of Individualism, and the Choice to Abstain from Activism
  27. The Invention of Zero: How Ancient Mesopotamia Created the Mathematical Concept of Nought and Ancient India Gave It Symbolic Form
  28. The Unity of the Universe: Nobel-Winning Physicist Steven Weinberg on Simplicity and Complexity, Science and Religion, and the Ultimate Question
  29. An Anthem Against Silence: Amanda Palmer Reads Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s Piercing and Prescient 1914 Protest Poem

January 2017

  1. Poet, Painter, and Philosopher Kahlil Gibran on Creativity
  2. Hannah Arendt on Jewishness, the Immigrant Plight for Identity, and the Meaning of “Refugee”
  3. Literary Constellations: Astronomy-Inspired Visualizations of the Opening Sentences of Beloved Books
  4. The Story Behind “Silent Spring”: How Rachel Carson’s Countercultural Courage Catalyzed the Environmental Movement
  5. In Search of a Better World: Karl Popper on Truth vs. Certainty and the Dangers of Relativism
  6. Simone de Beauvoir on Atheism, the Ultimate Frontier of Hope, and the Key to Moving Beyond the Simplistic Divide of Optimism and Pessimism
  7. Oliver Sacks on Evolving Our Notions of Normalcy to Include the Differently Abled
  8. Sociological Machiavellianism: Peter Berger on Compassion and the Humanistic Antidote to Cynicism
  9. The Muse of History: Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott on Why Reconciling Our Conflicting Ancestral Pasts Is Necessary for Cultural Renewal
  10. A Partnership Larger Than Marriage: The Stunning Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell
  11. The Art of Knowing What to Do in Life: Pioneering Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Purpose Beyond Expectation and Choice Unbounded by Convention
  12. Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us from the Slumber of Almost-Living
  13. Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft on the Imagination and Its Seductive Power in Human Relationships
  14. Encke’s Comet, Celestial Poetics, and the Dawn of Popular Astronomy: How Emma Converse Became the Carl Sagan of the 19th Century
  15. How Do You Know That You Love Somebody? Philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s Incompleteness Theorem of the Heart’s Truth, from Plato to Proust
  16. The Monarchs, Music, and the Meaning of Life: The Most Touching Deathbed Love Letter Ever Written
  17. John Cheever on the Pain of Loneliness and How It Feeds the Beauty and Creative Restlessness of Youth
  18. Wonder-Sighting in the Medieval World: Stunning Sixteenth-Century Drawings of Comets, with Carl Sagan’s Poetic Meditation on Their Science
  19. Legendary Anthropologist Margaret Mead on Work, Leisure, and Creativity
  20. Sleep Demons: Bill Hayes on REM, the Poetics of Yawns, and Maurice Sendak’s Antidote to Insomnia
  21. Simone de Beauvoir on How Chance and Choice Converge to Make Us Who We Are
  22. Denise Levertov on Making Art Amid Chaos and the Artist’s Task to Awaken Society’s Sleepers
  23. Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on Selfhood, the Crucible of Identity, and What Makes Life’s Transience Bearable
  24. Trailblazing 18th-Century Mathematician Émilie du Châtelet, Who Popularized Newton, on Gender in Science and the Nature of Genius
  25. Marcus Aurelius on How to Motivate Yourself to Get Out of Bed in the Morning and Go to Work
  26. Adrienne Rich Reads “What Kind of Times Are These”

2016 489

December 2016

  1. John Steinbeck on Good and Evil, the Necessary Contradictions of the Human Nature, and Our Grounds for Lucid Hope
  2. Democracy: Neil Gaiman’s Transcendent Animated Tribute to Leonard Cohen, with Piano by Amanda Palmer
  3. The Creative Architect: Inside Psychology’s Most Ambitious and Influential Study of What Makes a Creative Person
  4. Remembering Vera Rubin: The Trailblazing Astrophysicist Who Confirmed the Existence of Dark Matter and Paved the Way for Modern Women in Science
  5. Simone de Beauvoir on Our Search for Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation
  6. Meet Mary Somerville: The Brilliant Woman for Whom the Word “Scientist” Was Coined
  7. Albert Camus on Consciousness and the Lacuna Between Truth and Meaning
  8. Art in the Light of Conscience: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Loving vs. Understanding and the Paradoxical Psychology of Our Resistance to Ideas
  9. Solstice and Our Search for Meaning: Annie Dillard on How Winter Awakens Us to Life
  10. Hannah Arendt on Loneliness as the Common Ground for Terror and How Tyrannical Regimes Use Isolation as a Weapon of Oppression
  11. Physicist David Bohm on Creativity
  12. The Conscience of Words: Susan Sontag on the Wisdom of Literature, the Danger of Opinions, and the Writer’s Task
  13. 16 Overall Favorite Books of 2016
  14. The Invention of Empathy: Rilke, Rodin, and the Art of “Inseeing”
  15. Marie Curie, Ambulance Driver: The Trailblazing Scientist’s Little-Known Humanitarian Heroism and Her Life-Saving Mobile X-Ray Units
  16. The Difficult Art of Counter-Criticism: Rebecca Solnit on Celebrating Complexity, Savoring the Unquantifiable, and Defying the Urge to Simplify and Contain
  17. The Best Children’s Books of 2016
  18. Descartes on the Vital Relationship Between Fear and Hope
  19. Acts That Amplify: Ann Hamilton on Art, the Creative Value of Unproductive Time, and the Power of Not Knowing
  20. Why Our Partners Drive Us Mad: Alain de Botton to the Central Challenge of Human Relationships and How to Heal It
  21. We Found a Hat: Jon Klassen’s Minimalist, Maximally Wonderful Parable of Transforming Covetousness into Generosity and Justice
  22. Poet Ann Lauterbach on Why We Make Art and How Art Makes Us
  23. Tim Ferriss on How He Survived Suicidal Depression and His Tools for Warding Off the Darkness
  24. Du Iz Tak? A Lyrical Illustrated Story About the Cycle of Life and the Eternal Equilibrium of Growth and Decay
  25. The Greatest Science Books of 2016
  26. Storytelling and the Power of Language: Toni Morrison’s Spectacular Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
  27. 10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings, Animated
  28. The Glass Universe: How Harvard’s Unsung Women Astronomers Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos Decades Before Women Could Vote
  29. A Voyage in the Clouds: The Heartening Illustrated Story of the First International Flight in 1785
  30. Legendary Physicist David Bohm on the Paradox of Communication, the Crucial Difference Between Discussion and Dialogue, and What Is Keeping Us from Listening to One Another
  31. Preaching to the Chickens: How Civil Rights Legend John Lewis’s Humble Childhood Incubated His Heroic Life
  32. Joan Didion on Learning Not to Mistake Self-Righteousness for Morality
  33. Stitching the Stars: Trailblazing Astronomer Maria Mitchell on the Needle as a Double-Edged Instrument of the Mind and Why Women Are Better Suited for Astronomy Than Men
  34. This Is Not a Picture Book: An Irreverent Illustrated Ode to Why We Read
  35. Weather, Weather: Maira Kalman and Daniel Handler’s Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Elements
  36. Descartes on the Cure for Indecision
  37. Genes and the Holy G: Siddhartha Mukherjee on the Dark Cultural History of IQ and Why We Can’t Measure Intelligence

November 2016

  1. An Artist’s Life Manifesto: Marina Abramović’s Rules of Life, Solitude, and Silence
  2. You Are Here: Creative Cartography Mapping the Soul of New York
  3. Eileen Myles Reads “For My Rampant Muse, For Her”
  4. A Truly Human Endeavor: Cosmologist Janna Levin on the Transcendence of Science, the Climb Toward Truth, and Why Scientists Do What They Do
  5. C.S. Lewis on Equality and Our Core Misconception About Democracy
  6. Hold Still: Sally Mann on the Treachery of Memory, the Dark Side of Photography, and the Elusive Locus of the Self
  7. Radical Hope: Philosopher Jonathan Lear on the Paradoxical Seedbed of Courage and Cultural Resilience
  8. Moon Man: Tomi Ungerer’s Timeless Vintage Illustrated Fable of How Fear and Cynicism Blind Us to Benevolence
  9. Einstein on Widening Our Circles of Compassion
  10. Healing the Heart of Democracy: Parker Palmer on Holding the Tension of Our Differences in a Creative Way
  11. In the Company of Women: Wisdom and Advice on the Creative Life from Beloved Women Artists, Makers, and Entrepreneurs
  12. Nobel Laureate André Gide on the Freedom of Expression and the Vital Role of Art as Both Insurgency and Acceptance
  13. Patti Smith on Listening to the Creative Impulse and the Crucial Difference Between Writing Poetry and Songwriting
  14. Young Barack Obama on Identity, the Search for a Coherent Self, and How We Fragment Our Wholeness with Polarizing Identity Politics
  15. Maya Angelou on How a Library Saved Her Life
  16. Dissident Poet Boris Pasternak on Aloneness and Why We Make Art
  17. Multivocality, Polyphony, Gumbo Yaya: Elizabeth Alexander, Barack Obama’s Inaugural Poet, on the Power of Poetry in Moments of Powerlessness
  18. Chinua Achebe on How Storytelling Helps Us Survive History’s Rough Patches
  19. Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on the Courage and the Necessity of Crises
  20. No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear: Toni Morrison on the Artist’s Task in Troubled Times
  21. Leonard Cohen on Moonlight, the Mystique of Creativity, His Influences, and Why He Loves It When People Cover His Songs
  22. The Polar Bear: An Empathic Illustrated Invitation into the World of One of Our Planet’s Most Vulnerable Creatures
  23. The Dinner Party: Artist Judy Chicago’s Iconic Antidote to the Erasure of Women in the History of Creative Culture
  24. Chirri & Chirra: A Japanese Parallel Love Letter to the Natural World and the Whimsical World
  25. H.L. Mencken on Reclaiming Democracy from the Mob Mentality That Masquerades for It
  26. Finding Poetry in Other Lives: James Baldwin on Shakespeare, Language as a Tool of Love, and the Poet’s Responsibility to a Divided Society
  27. Elena Ferrante on the Myth of Inspiration, Writing on Demand, and the Central Truth of the Creative Process
  28. There Is a Crack in Everything, That’s How the Light Gets In: Leonard Cohen on Democracy and Its Redemptions
  29. Kindness Over Fear: Naomi Shihab Nye Tells the Remarkable Real-Life Story That Inspired Her Beloved Poem “Kindness”
  30. Carl Sagan on Moving Beyond Us vs. Them, Bridging Conviction with Compassion, and Meeting Ignorance with Kindness
  31. November 9, 1928: The Trial of Radclyffe Hall and Virginia Woolf’s Exquisite Case for the Freedom of Speech
  32. On Nonconformity: Artist Ben Shahn’s Spirited Defense of Nonconformists as Society’s Engine of Growth and Greatness
  33. Albert Camus on the Will to Live and the Most Important Question of Existence
  34. Making the Impossible Possible: 21-Year-Old Hillary Rodham’s Remarkable 1969 Wellesley College Commencement Speech
  35. Pioneering Physicist Lise Meitner’s Only Direct Discussion of Gender in Science
  36. De Profundis: Patti Smith Reads Oscar Wilde’s Stirring Letter on Suffering and Transcendence, Penned in Prison
  37. Roland: A Charming Vintage Illustrated Ode to the Imagination and the Animating Power of Kindness
  38. May Sarton on Anger as Creativity in Reverse and a Safety Valve Against Madness
  39. The King of the Birds: The Illustrated Story of Flannery O’Connor and Her Beloved Peacock
  40. The Women Who Made New York: Restoring the Rightful Ratio of Remembrance
  41. Mary Oliver on Staying Alive
  42. Ursula K. Le Guin on Writing as Falling in Love
  43. Alan Watts on Our Search for Meaning and the Antidote to Our Existential Loneliness

October 2016

  1. 35 Odd Jobs Celebrated Painter Agnes Martin Held Before She Became an Artist
  2. I Regard With Compassion, Therefore I Am: Descartes on How We Acquire Nobility of Soul and the Crucial Difference Between Confidence and Pride
  3. Keats on the Three Layers of Reality and What Gives Meaning to Human Existence
  4. Trailblazing Philosopher Susanne Langer on the Purpose of Art, How It Works Us Over, and How Abstract Thinking Gives Shape to Human Emotion
  5. How Pioneering Physicist Lise Meitner Discovered Nuclear Fission, Paved the Way for Women in Science, and Was Denied the Nobel Prize
  6. Moral Courage at Knifepoint: One Man’s Remarkable Response to His Mugger Reminds Us of What Is Best in Us
  7. Walk Through Walls: Marina Abramović on Art, Fear, Taking Risks, and Pain as a Focal Lens for Presence
  8. Explainer, Elucidator, Enchanter: A Gradation of Great Writing
  9. Joseph Brodsky on the Greatest Antidote to Evil
  10. Goethe’s Graphically Daring Diagrams of Color Perception
  11. Abraham Lincoln on Living with Loss: His Magnificent Letter of Consolation to a Grief-stricken Young Woman
  12. 10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings
  13. A Small Dark Light: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Legacy of the Tao Te Ching and What It Continues to Teach Us About Personal and Political Power 2,500 Years Later
  14. Proust on Why We Read
  15. Time Is When: A Charming Vintage Children’s Book About the Most Perplexing Dimension of Existence
  16. Nonstop Metropolis: An Atlas of Maps Reclaiming New York’s Untold Stories and Unseen Populations
  17. Meditation Teacher Sharon Salzberg on What Compassion Really Means and How We Can Train Our Attention Toward It
  18. When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light: Mark Strand Reads His Poignant Poem “The End”
  19. The Daily Stoic: Timeless Wisdom on Character, Fortitude, Self-Control, and the Art of Living from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius
  20. Poet May Sarton on the Cure for Despair and the Key to Self-Discovery
  21. Listen! Listen!: A Vintage Invitation to Presence and Attentive Attunement with the World, Illustrated by Graphic Design Legend Paul Rand
  22. Thinking vs. Cognition: Hannah Arendt on the Difference Between How Art and Science Illuminate the Human Condition
  23. The Death of a Tree: Eulogy for Friend
  24. What Color Is The Wind? A Most Unusual Serenade to the Senses, Inspired by a Blind Child
  25. The Central Paradox of Love: Esther Perel on Reconciling the Closeness Needed for Intimacy with the Psychological Distance That Fuels Desire
  26. The Third Self: Mary Oliver on Creativity and Time
  27. I Am Not I: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on How We Become Who We Are and the Path to Self-Liberation
  28. The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook: Food-Related Memories, Meditations, and Favorite Recipes by Beloved Creators
  29. The Trans-Sensory Transcendence of Music: Helen Keller’s Electrifying Letter About “Hearing” Beethoven’s Ode to Joy
  30. Why Anonymity Is More Artistically Rewarding Than Fame: Virginia Woolf on Elena Ferrante
  31. The Courage to Despair: Goethe, the Inner Tension of Creativity, and What It Takes to Be a Great Artist
  32. Mozart and Haydn’s Beautiful, Selfless Friendship
  33. How to Handle Provocation: Bertrand Russell’s Remarkable Response to a Fascist
  34. How Libraries Save Lives
  35. The Secret Life of Smell and What Dogs Can Teach Us About Accessing Hidden Layers of Reality
  36. Rilke on Writing and What It Takes to Be an Artist
  37. Leonard Bernstein on Cynicism, Instant Gratification, and Why Paying Attention Is a Countercultural Act of Courage and Resistance
  38. Broadcasters of the Self: Ian McEwan on Our Age of Identity and How the Politics of Modern Selfhood Imperils the Art of Listening

September 2016

  1. A Cry of Gratitude: Baudelaire’s Magnificent Fan Mail to Wagner
  2. The Power Paradox: The Surprising and Sobering Science of How We Gain and Lose Influence
  3. Orson Welles Reads Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”
  4. The Difficult Balance of Intimacy and Independence: Beloved Philosopher and Poet Kahlil Gibran on the Secret to a Loving and Lasting Relationship
  5. James Gleick on How Our Cultural Fascination with Time Travel Illuminates Memory, the Nature of Time, and the Central Mystery of Human Consciousness
  6. The Secret Life of Trees: The Astonishing Science of What Trees Feel and How They Communicate
  7. Virginia Woolf on the Nature of Memory and How It Threads Our Lives Together
  8. We Are the American Heartbreak: Langston Hughes on Race in a Rare Recording
  9. A Beginning, Not a Decline: Colette on the Splendor of Autumn and the Autumn of Life
  10. George Bernard Shaw on the Meaning of Solidarity and Suffering as Our Supreme Conduit to Empathy
  11. James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe’s Forgotten Conversation About Beauty, Morality, and the Political Power of Art
  12. Eudora Welty on the Difficult Art of Seeing Each Other and the Power of Photography as a Dignifying Force
  13. Truth Beyond Logic and Time Beyond Clocks: Janna Levin on the Vienna Circle and How Mathematician Kurt Gödel Shaped the Modern Mind
  14. Borges on How to Conquer Time
  15. Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Powered Early Space Exploration
  16. The Day I Became a Bird: A Tender Illustrated Parable of Falling in Love and Learning to Unmask Our True Selves
  17. Harvest and the Human Spirit: Henry Beston on How Our Relationship to the Earth Reveals Us to Ourselves
  18. How to Meditate: An Animated Guide
  19. The New Better Off: Courtney Martin on Reimagining Our Ethos of Success and Reclaiming Our Sense of “Enough”
  20. Baudelaire on the Genius of Childhood
  21. Just-Like-That Mind: A Great Zen Teacher on Navigating Loss and Grief
  22. Young Barack Obama on What His Mother Taught Him About Love
  23. Composing a Life: Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson on Our False Mythos of Achievement and the Messy, Nonlinear Reality of How We Become Who We Are
  24. Facing the Blank Page: Celebrated Writers on How to Overcome Creative Block
  25. The Möbius Strip of Remembering and Forgetting: Teju Cole on How the Paradox of Photography Clarifies the Central Anxiety of Existence
  26. Pinocchio: An Alternative Origin Story Exploring the Grandest Questions of Existence
  27. A Cross-Cultural Bridge of Kinship and Mutual Appreciation: The Moving Correspondence of Albert Camus and Boris Pasternak
  28. How to Conquer Self-Doubt and Overcome Creative Block: Artist SoLewitt’s Magnificent Letter of Advice
  29. Leo Tolstoy on Love and Its Paradoxical Demands
  30. What Makes a Hero and the True Measure of the Human Spirit: Walter Lippmann’s Stunning Tribute to Amelia Earhart
  31. The Sound of Silence: An Illustrated Serenade to the Art of Listening to Your Inner Voice Amid the Noise of Modern Life
  32. The Terror of Kindness: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Overriding Our Cultural Conditioning and Living Beyond Fear
  33. Dear Data: A Lyrical Illustrated Serenade to How Our Attention Shapes Our Reality
  34. Jennifer Egan on Writing, the Trap of Approval, and the Most Important Discipline in Creative Work
  35. The Private Person and the Public Persona: Borges on the Divided Self
  36. A Child of Books: An Illustrated Love Letter to the Wondrous World of Words and Stories
  37. How the Bit Was Born: Claude Shannon and the Invention of Information
  38. How to Vacation Like a Poet: A Postcard from Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott
  39. The Difficult Art of Self-Compassion
  40. It from Bit: Pioneering Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Information, the Nature of Reality, and Why We Live in a Participatory Universe
  41. Salvador Dalí’s Rare 1969 Illustrations for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Rediscovered and Resurrected
  42. How Horses Civilized Humanity, Shrank the Distance of Love, and Shaped the Way We Conduct Our Romantic Relationships
  43. The Great Zen Master Seung Sahn Soen-sa on the Four Types of Anger and Its Paradoxical Constructive Side

August 2016

  1. Baudelaire on Beauty and Strangeness
  2. The Nature of Love: How Harry Harlow’s Seminal 1958 Research Shaped the Science of Affection and Changed Modern Parenting
  3. Oliver Sacks on Death, Destiny, and the Redemptive Radiance of a Life Fully Lived
  4. Eudora Welty on Friendship as an Evolutionary Mechanism for Language
  5. Beloved Poet Thom Gunn’s Reading List of 10 Essential Books to Enchant Teenagers with Poetry
  6. Frida Kahlo’s Illustrious Life, Illustrated
  7. Auden on the True Task of the Critic, What It Really Means to Be a Scholar, and Why Malevolent Reviews Are Bad for Character
  8. Swifter Than a Bird Flies: An Astonishing Account of Riding the First Passenger Train and How the Invention of Railroads Changed Human Consciousness
  9. Bruce Lee’s Daughter Shares Her Father’s Philosophy of Learning
  10. Virginia Woolf on How Our Illusions Keep Us Alive
  11. Aristotle’s Aperture: An Animated History of Photography, from the Camera Obscura to the Camera Phone
  12. The Birth of Global Emotion: Borges on Collective Grief and Collective Joy
  13. Adrienne Rich on the Political Power of Poetry and Its Role in the Immigrant Experience
  14. What Makes a Good Life: Revelatory Learnings from Harvard’s 75-Year Study of Human Happiness
  15. Cycling as a Cure for Creative Block: A Charming 1926 Case for Why the Bicycle Is the Ideal Vehicle for Writers
  16. Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury,” His Lovely Present for Bradbury’s 91st and Final Birthday
  17. A Fairy Tale of Infinity and Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama Illustrates Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”
  18. Rock Climbing and the Meaning of Life: Vita Sackville-West’s Letters to Virginia Woolf on the Intimacy-Building Power of Travel and How Nature Reveals Us to Ourselves
  19. Werner Herzog Recommends Five Books Every Aspiring Filmmaker Should Read
  20. Baudelaire on the Political and Humanitarian Power of Art: An Open Letter to Those in Power and of Privilege
  21. The Wolves of Currumpaw: The Illustrated True Story of the Tragic and Redemptive Fate of Wolves in North America
  22. Ted Hughes on How to Be a Writer: A Letter of Advice to His 18-Year-Old Daughter
  23. Life on a Möbius Strip: The Greatest Moth Story Ever Told, About the Unlikely Paths That Lead Us Back to Ourselves
  24. Reclaiming Friendship: A Visual Taxonomy of Platonic Relationships to Counter the Commodification of the Word “Friend”
  25. Alain de Botton on What Makes a Good Communicator and the Difficult Art of Listening in Intimate Relationships
  26. Colette on Writing, the Blissful Obsessive-Compulsiveness of Creative Work, and Withstanding Naysayers
  27. Proust on Love and How Our Intellect Blinds Us to the Wisdom of the Heart
  28. James Gleick on Our Anxiety About Time, the Origin of the Term “Type A,” and the Curious Psychology of Elevator Impatience
  29. Wave: A Most Unusual Coloring Book by English Artist Shantell Martin, Inspired by Life in Japan
  30. Auden on Writing, Originality, Self-Criticism, and How to Be a Good Reader
  31. Mental Health, Free Will, and Your Microbiome
  32. A Revolution With No Rewind: Galileo’s Daughter and How the Patron Saint of Astronomy Reconciled Science and Spirituality
  33. Blake, Beethoven, and the Tragic Genius of Outsiderdom
  34. The Rocket Book: A Conceptually Ingenious, Stunningly Illustrated 1912 Children’s Book About Urban Living
  35. Rosanne Cash on Creative Heritage, the Bravery of Befriending Our Roots, and What Her Father, Johnny Cash, Taught Her About Artistic Integrity
  36. Schopenhauer on the Essential Difference Between How Art and Science Reveal the World
  37. Diane Ackerman on the Evolutionary and Existential Purpose of Deep Play
  38. Neil Gaiman on Why We Read and What Books Do for the Human Experience
  39. A Benediction on the World: Wendell Berry on Creaturely Joy
  40. The Reason of Emotion: Bruce Lee’s Unpublished Writings on Willpower, Imagination, and Confidence
  41. Virginia Woolf on Clothing as a Vehicle of Identity, the Fluidity of Gender, and the Trans Dimension of Human Nature
  42. Maria Mitchell and the Spider’s Web: A Touching Testament to Tenacity from America’s First Woman Astronomer

July 2016

  1. How Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West Fell in Love
  2. An Illustrated Celebration of Trailblazing Women in Science
  3. Pioneering Scientist Erwin Chargaff on the Power of Being an Outsider and What Makes a Great Teacher
  4. Henry Beston on Happiness, Simplicity, and the Sacredness of Smallness
  5. Neuroscientist Sam Harris on Our Misconceptions About Free Will and How Acknowledging Its Illusoriness Liberates Us Rather Than Taking Away Our Freedom
  6. Susan Sontag on How Photography Mediates Our Relationship with Life and Death
  7. Chelsea Clinton Reads James Baldwin on the Creative Process and the Artist’s Role in Society
  8. The Effortless Effort of Creativity: Jane Hirshfield on Storytelling, the Art of Concentration, and Difficulty as a Consecrating Force of Creative Attention
  9. Hemingway’s Tough-Love Letter of Advice to F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing and Turning Suffering into Creative Fuel
  10. Perception and the Power of the Critical Imagination: Alfred Kazin on Embracing Contradiction and How the Sacredness of Human Attention Shapes Our Reality
  11. Arthur Schopenhauer on the Relationship Between Genius and Madness and How Memory Mediates the Blurry Line Between Sanity and Insanity
  12. Snail, Where Are You? Tomi Ungerer’s Wordless Vintage Conceptual Masterpiece
  13. How to Neutralize Haters: E.E. Cummings, Creative Courage, and the Importance of Protecting the Artist’s Right to Challenge the Status Quo
  14. The Science of What Makes You You and How Old Your Body Really Is
  15. Geoff Dyer on the Paradoxical Rewards of Our Capacity for Disappointment
  16. How Astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell Shaped Our Understanding of the Universe by Discovering Pulsars, Only to Be Excluded from the Nobel Prize
  17. You Got Me Singing: Jack and Amanda Palmer’s Elegy for Time and Ode to the Dignity of the Downtrodden and the Dispossessed
  18. William Blake’s Most Beautiful Letter: A Timeless Defense of the Imagination and the Creative Spirit
  19. 100 Days of Overthinking: An Illustrated Diary of Mental Meanderings
  20. The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: Astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser on the Transcendence of Nature and Fishing as a Metaphor for the Pursuit of Knowledge
  21. Nora Ephron on Women, Politics, and the Myth of Objectivity in Journalism
  22. Thoreau on How to Use Civil Disobedience to Advance Justice
  23. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
  24. Hermann Hesse on the Three Types of Readers and the Most Transcendent Form of Reading
  25. The Power of Solidarity in the Conquest of Justice: How Sixteen White Poets Banded Against Police Brutality and Stood Up for Amiri Baraka in 1968
  26. Étienne Léopold Trouvelot’s Stunning 19th-Century Astronomical Drawings of Celestial Objects and Phenomena
  27. The Science of Affection: How a Rebel Researcher Pioneered the Study of Love in the 1950s and Illuminated How Parents Shape Children’s Emotional Patterns
  28. What Makes an Artist: A Poetic Portrait of the Creative Spirit by the Forgotten Swiss Visionary Robert Walser
  29. Alfred Kazin on Loneliness, Love, Otherness, and How Reading Sets Us Free
  30. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on How Our Minds Obscure Our Bodies
  31. Geographical Fun: A Victorian Teenage Girl’s Impressive Cartographic Caricatures of European Countries and Their National Stereotypes
  32. Artist Anne Truitt on Love, Loss, Regret, What Makes Marriage Work, and the Syncopation of Grief and Gladness

June 2016

  1. Conundrum: Pioneering Trans Writer Jan Morris on Gender, Identity, Belonging, and the Integration of Body and Spirit
  2. Why Do We Love? An Animated Inquiry Into Romance by Philosopher Skye Cleary
  3. Schopenhauer on What Makes a Genius and the Crucial Difference Between Talent and Genius
  4. The Evolution of the Book, Animated
  5. Amanda Palmer Reads “Humanity I Love You” by E.E. Cummings
  6. E.B. White on Nuclear Weapons and What It Really Takes to Live in a Peaceful World
  7. Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Psychological Paradox of the Sulk
  8. Mapping the Heavens: How Cosmology Shaped Our Understanding of the Universe and the Strange Story of How the Term “Black Hole” Was Born
  9. Walt Whitman on Identity and the Paradox of the Self
  10. David Ogilvy on the True Value of Education: A Brilliant Letter of Advice to His 18-Year-Old Nephew
  11. Thin Slices of Anxiety: An Illustrated Meditation on What It’s Like to Live Enslaved by Worry and How to Break Free
  12. The Emperor of Time: A Dreamlike Short Film About Motion Picture Pioneer Eadweard Muybridge
  13. Abraham Lincoln’s Tough-Love Letter to His Step-Brother About Laziness and Work Ethic
  14. Mary McCarthy on Human Nature, Moral Choice, and How We Decide Whether Evil Is Forgivable
  15. Seasonality and the Spirit: The Great Nature Writer Henry Beston on Change in Nature and Human Nature
  16. Patternicity: Dreamy Diagrams and Lyrical Visualizations of the Eccentric Details of Daily Life in the City
  17. The Science of How Our Minds and Our Bodies Converge in the Healing of Trauma
  18. Albert Camus on What It Means to Be a Rebel and to Be in Solidarity with Justice
  19. Virginia Woolf on the Relationship Between Loneliness and Creativity
  20. The Lost Art of Astropoetics: An 1881 Cosmic Masterpiece by the Forgotten Woman Who Popularized Astronomy
  21. How to Spot and How to Stop a Liar: Hannah Arendt on Deception, Self-Deception, and the Psychology of Defactualization
  22. The Final Word Is Love: Dorothy Day on Human Connection, Music, and the Power of Community
  23. Strong as a Bear: An Illustrated Celebration of Animals and Their Emotional Presence in Language
  24. Pioneering Biochemist Erwin Chargaff on the Poetics of Curiosity, the Crucial Difference Between Understanding and Explanation, and What Makes a Scientist
  25. Einstein’s Brilliant and Unusual Life, in a Graphic Novel
  26. Mary McCarthy on Love and Hannah Arendt’s Advice to Her on Paradox of Changing the People We Love
  27. Strange Trees: An Illustrated Atlas of the World’s Arboreal Wonders
  28. John Cage’s Symphonic Love Letters to the Love of His Life
  29. Permanent Present Tense: Pioneering Scientist Suzanne Corkin on How the Famous Amnesiac H.M. Illuminates the Paradoxes of Memory and the Self
  30. How Our Government Helps Us: A Charming 1969 Illustrated Primer
  31. The Timeless Magic of the Book in the Age of Technology: Hermann Hesse on Why We Read and Always Will
  32. Your Body Is a Space That Sees: Artist Lia Halloran’s Stunning Cyanotype Tribute to Women in Astronomy
  33. Psychologist Jerome Bruner on Mutuality and How Storytelling Shapes Our Sense of Personhood
  34. Anne Lamott on the Life-Giving Power of Great Teachers
  35. Eyes on the Stars: Astronaut Ronald McNair, Who Perished in the Challenger Disaster, Remembered by His Brother in an Affectionate Animated Short Film
  36. Leo Tolstoy, Shortly Before His Death, on Love, Reason, Human Nature, and What Gives Meaning to Our Lives
  37. Allen Ginsberg on the Tyranny of the Closet, Coming Out to His Loved Ones, and How Buddhist Meditation Helped Him Stop Seeking Approval
  38. Primo Levi on the Spiritual Value of Science and How Space Exploration Brings Humanity Closer Together
  39. Henry Beston on Human Nature and the Power of Community
  40. An Illustrated Celebration of Jane Austen’s Life
  41. Walt Whitman’s Advice on Living a Vibrant and Rewarding Life

May 2016

  1. Existential Therapy from the Universe: Physicist Sean Carroll on How Poetic Naturalism Illuminates Our Human Search for Meaning
  2. The Power of Cautionary Questions: Neil Gaiman on Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ Why We Read, and How Speculative Storytelling Enlarges Our Humanity
  3. George Eliot on Leisure and Our Greatest Source of Restlessness
  4. How Do You Measure Your Life: Artist Carrie Mae Weems’s Stirring SVA Commencement Address
  5. Computer Crashes Before Computers: When John Steinbeck’s Dog Ate His Manuscript
  6. The Annihilation of Space and Time: Rebecca Solnit on How Muybridge Froze the Flow of Existence, Shaped Visual Culture, and Changed Our Consciousness
  7. Can Goodness Win? George Saunders on Writing, the Artist’s Task, and the Importance of Living with Opposing Truths
  8. Daytime Visions: A Tender and Unusual Illustrated Alphabet Celebrating the Whimsy of Words
  9. Elizabeth Alexander on Writing, the Ethic of Love, Language as a Vehicle for the Self, and the Inherent Poetry of Personhood
  10. Stunning Vintage Illustrations for Scheherazade’s Stories and Scandinavian Fairy Tales by Swedish Modernist Pioneer and LGBT Visibility Trailblazer GAN
  11. Against Self-Criticism: Adam Phillips on How Our Internal Critics Enslave Us, the Stockholm Syndrome of the Superego, and the Power of Multiple Interpretations
  12. Audre Lorde on the Vulnerability of Visibility and Our Responsibility, to Ourselves and Others, to Break Our Silences
  13. Progress: Kate Tempest’s Electrifying Spoken-Word Meditation on Kindness, Fear, and Our Fraught Fillers of Existential Emptiness
  14. The Art of Medicine: W.H. Auden on What Makes a Great Physician and How He Influenced Oliver Sacks
  15. Speaking Truth to Power and the Value of Counterpoints: Madeleine Albright’s Surprising Commencement Address
  16. The Will to Doubt: Bertrand Russell on Free Thought and Our Only Effective Self-Defense Against Propaganda
  17. Eleanor Roosevelt on Science
  18. The Storm: A Lovely Illustrated Parable of Fear, the Frustration of Uncontrollable Events, and the Redemptive Power of Surrendering to Life’s Ebb and Flow
  19. Wait: Galway Kinnell’s Beautiful and Life-Giving Poem for a Young Friend Contemplating Suicide
  20. How Leo Tolstoy Found His Purpose: The Beloved Author on Personal Growth and the Meaning of Human Existence
  21. On the Soul-Sustaining Necessity of Resisting Self-Comparison and Fighting Cynicism: A Commencement Address
  22. A Largeness of Contemplation: Bertrand Russell on Intuition, the Intellect, and the Nature of Time
  23. Lou Andreas-Salomé, the First Woman Psychoanalyst, on Depression and Creativity in Letters to Rilke
  24. In Praise of the Tamed Metaphysicist: Einstein on Reality, Rationality, and the Human Passion for Comprehension
  25. Virginia Woolf on What Makes Love Last
  26. The Source of Richard Feynman’s Genius
  27. W.H. Auden on Writing, Belief, Doubt, False vs. True Enchantment, and the Most Important Principle of Making Art
  28. A Lovely Vintage Children’s Concept Book About How the Imagination Works, Newly Discovered and Illustrated
  29. James Baldwin on Freedom and How We Imprison Ourselves
  30. Alison Bechdel on Writing, Therapy, Self-Doubt, and How the Messiness of Life Feeds the Creative Conscience
  31. Pioneering Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott on the Mother as a Pillar of Society
  32. Ursula K. Le Guin on Power, Freedom, and How Storytelling Expands Our Scope of the Possible
  33. Either/Or: Kierkegaard on Transcending the Tyranny of Binary Choice and Double Regret
  34. The Magic and Logic of Powerful Public Speaking: TED Curator Chris Anderson’s Field Guide to Giving a Great Talk
  35. Probability Theory Pioneer Mark Kac on the Unpredictability of Creativity and the Two Types of Geniuses
  36. Urbanism Patron Saint Jane Jacobs on Our Civic Duty in Cultivating Cities That Foster a Creative Life
  37. Duck, Death and the Tulip: An Uncommonly Tender Illustrated Meditation on the Cycle of Life
  38. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on Anger, Forgiveness, the Emotional Machinery of Trust, and the Only Fruitful Response to Betrayal in Intimate Relationships
  39. Nobel-Winning Physicist Frank Wilczek on Complementarity as the Quantum of Life and Why Reality Is Woven of Opposing Truths
  40. What It’s Like to Be Transgender: A Piercing Poem by Slam Poet and TED Fellow Lee Mokobe
  41. Eleanor Roosevelt on the Power of Personal Conviction and Our Individual Responsibility in Social Change

April 2016

  1. It’s Only a Draft, After All: Graham Greene on Love and Death in Existential Reflections from His Dream Diary
  2. Poetry and the Creative Mind: Bill T. Jones’s Electrifying Reading of Four Beloved Poems
  3. Schopenhauer on the Power of Music
  4. The Psychology of Time and How the Interplay of Spontaneity and Self-Control Mediates Our Capacity for Presence
  5. Sylvia Plath Reads “Spinster” in a Rare BBC Recording
  6. Dostoyevsky on Integrity, Success, and the Ultimate Goal of Creative Work
  7. The Joy of Swimming: An Illustrated Celebration of the Water as a Medium of Bodily, Mental, and Spiritual Movement
  8. A Madman Dreams of Tuning Machines: The Story of Joseph Weber, the Tragic Hero of Science Who Followed Einstein’s Vision and Pioneered the Sound of Spacetime
  9. The Remarkable Love Letters of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger
  10. The Importance of Being Scared: Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on Fairy Tales and the Necessity of Fear
  11. Trailblazing Philosopher Susanne Langer on How Our Questions Shape Our Answers and Direct Our Orientation of Mind
  12. Nietzsche on Dreams as an Evolutionary Time Machine for the Human Brain
  13. Van Gogh on Heartbreak and Unrequited Love as a Vitalizing Force for Creative Work
  14. Don’t Heed the Haters: Albert Einstein’s Wonderful Letter of Support to Marie Curie in the Midst of Scandal
  15. Healthcare and the Human Spirit: Walt Whitman on the Most Important Priority in Healing the Body and the Soul
  16. Pioneering Astronomer Vera Rubin on Women in Science, Dark Matter, and Our Never-Ending Quest to Know the Universe
  17. Kafka on Taoism, the Nature of Reality, and the Truth of Human Life
  18. Lenny & Lucy: A Lovely Illustrated Parable of Befriending Change and Transcending Our Fear of the Unknown
  19. Artist Louise Bourgeois on How Solitude Enriches Creative Work
  20. The Rise of Rocket Girls: The Untold Story of the Remarkable Women Who Powered Space Exploration
  21. How Music Helps Us Grieve
  22. John Steinbeck on Racism and Bigotry
  23. James Baldwin on the Relationship Between Creativity and Integrity
  24. Feathers: A Stunning Photographic Love Letter to Evolution’s Masterpiece and Its Astonishing Array of Beauty
  25. Hannah Arendt on the Power of Being an Outsider
  26. Amanda Palmer on Art, Love, Loneliness, Motherhood, Vulnerability, Trust, and Our Lifelong Quest to Feel Real
  27. A Loving Illustrated Homage to Virginia Woolf’s Remarkable Life and Legacy
  28. Cicero on the Envy as a Counterintuitive Gateway to Compassion and Its Power as a Tuning Fork for Our Motivation
  29. The White Cat and the Monk: A Lovely 9th-Century Ode to the Joy of Uncompetitive Purposefulness, Newly Illustrated
  30. David Whyte on Vulnerability, Presence, and How Surrendering to the Uncontrollable Magnifies Your Life
  31. Spiderwoman’s Cloth Lullaby: The Illustrated Life of Artist Louise Bourgeois
  32. Sculpting in Time: Legendary Russian Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky on Why Film Enchants Us and What a Great Director Should Aim to Do
  33. How to Handle Criticism: Advice from Some of the Greatest Writers of the Past Century
  34. Trust Yourself: Emerson on Self-Reliance as the Essence of Genius and What It Means to Be a Nonconformist
  35. The Charming Doodles Charles Darwin’s Children Left All Over the Manuscript of ‘On the Origin of Species’
  36. Becoming Wise: Krista Tippett on Love and Mastering the Art of Living
  37. Aldous Huxley on the Transcendent Power of Music and Why It Sings to Our Souls
  38. James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni’s Extraordinary Forgotten Conversation About the Language of Love and What It Takes to Be Truly Empowered
  39. Erich Fromm on Human Nature, the Common Laziness of Optimism and Pessimism, and Why We Need Rational Faith in the Human Spirit
  40. John Steinbeck on Writing, the Crucible of Creativity, and the Mobilizing Power of the Impossible
  41. Plato’s Two Charioteers: Free Will, Moral Agency, and How to Negotiate Our Capacities for Good and Evil

March 2016

  1. Dostoyevsky on the Heart vs. the Mind and How We Come to Know Truth
  2. Rules for the Direction of the Mind: Descartes’s 12 Timeless Tenets of Critical Thinking
  3. Susan Sontag on Selfies, Selfhood, and How the Camera Helps Us Navigate Complexity
  4. Freedom in Congo Square: An Illustrated Ode to Finding Dignity Amid Oppression and the Soul-Preserving Function of Joy
  5. Rilke’s Redemption: The Beloved Poet’s Stirring Letter to His Boyhood Teacher at the Military Academy That Almost Broke His Soul
  6. Annie Dillard on Creativity and What It Takes to Be a Writer
  7. Aldous Huxley on Sincerity, Our Fear of the Obvious, and the Two Types of Truth Artists Must Reconcile
  8. Pioneering Psychologist William James on Attention, Multitasking, and the Mental Habit That Sets Great Minds Apart
  9. Patti Smith Reads Her Beautiful Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe About How He Taught Her What It Means to Be an Artist
  10. Pioneering 19th-Century Photographer Félix Nadar on Gender and the Single Most Important Factor in Becoming a Successful Artist
  11. Adrienne Rich on What a Great Blue Heron Taught Her About the Intersection of Art, Science, and Politics in Human Life
  12. The Savage and the Scholar: Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on the Role of the Artist in Humanizing Our History
  13. The Art of Living: The Great Humanistic Philosopher Erich Fromm on Having vs. Being and How to Set Ourselves Free from the Chains of Our Culture
  14. Billy Collins Reads His Homage to Aristotle
  15. Why Love Hurts: The Sociology of How Our Institutions Rather Than Our Personal Psychological Failings Shape the Romantic Agony of Modern Life
  16. Junot Díaz on the Complexities Beneath the Blanket Term “Race,” Our Limiting Mythologies of Success, Why Dictatorships Are Like Reddit, and How Artists Survive
  17. Studs Terkel on the Dignity of Work, Why We Do What We Do, and the Extraordinary Dreams of Ordinary People
  18. Steinbeck and the Difficult Art of the Friend Breakup
  19. The Strange, Familiar, and Forgotten: A Trailblazing Exploration of Consciousness, Memory, and How Our Sense of Self Arises
  20. Rebecca Solnit on Hope in Dark Times, Resisting the Defeatism of Easy Despair, and What Victory Really Means for Movements of Social Change
  21. Great Writers on the Power of Music
  22. ‘Humans of New York’ Founder Brandon Stanton on Serial Obsessions, How to Build a Sensibility, the Dignity-Conferring Power of Listening, and the Value of Time
  23. An Absorbing Errand: The Psychology of Mastery in Creative Work
  24. Einstein’s Message to Posterity from the 1939 World’s Fair Time-Capsule
  25. The Parallels Between Being an Artist and Being a Parent
  26. The Fox and the Star: A Lyrical Modern Fable of Loneliness and Belonging, Bridged Through Self-Discovery
  27. Ursula K. Le Guin on How You Make Something Good in Creative Work
  28. Make This World Worthy of Its Children: Legendary Cellist Pau Casals on JFK, Violence, the Proper Aim of Education, and the Measure of Our Humanity
  29. The Causes and Cures of Lovesickness: A 17th-Century Guide to the Woes of the Heart
  30. Henry James and H.G. Well’s Famous Feud About Writing, the Purpose of Art, and the Usefulness of Literature
  31. Cry, Heart, But Never Break: A Remarkable Illustrated Meditation on Loss and Life
  32. The Ship of Theseus: A Brilliant Ancient Thought Experiment Exploring What Makes You You
  33. Poet Sarah Kay on How We Measure Creative Success, Being a Working Artist in Today’s World, and the Only Antidote to Our Endemic Fear of Missing Out
  34. The Charter of Free Inquiry: The Buddha’s Timeless Toolkit for Critical Thinking and Combating Dogmatism
  35. Legendary Physicist Freeman Dyson on God, Unanswerable Questions, and Why Diversity Is the Ruling Law of the Universe
  36. The Most Beautiful Theory: Physicist Carlo Rovelli on the Aesthetic Enchantment and Scientific Impact of Einstein’s Relativity
  37. Eudora Welty Reads Her Comic and Quietly Heartbreaking Masterpiece “Why I Live at the P.O.”
  38. Thoreau on the Difference Between an Artisan, an Artist, and a Genius
  39. The Pancake King: A Lovely Vintage Children’s Book About How Success and Prestige Can Hijack Our Sense of Purpose
  40. What Makes a Person: The Seven Layers of Selfhood in Literature and Life
  41. Finding Winnie: The Improbable and Touching Real-Life Story of the Baby Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh
  42. Alan Turing’s Little-Known Contributions to Biology and His Mesmerizing Hand-Drawn Diagrams of Dappling Patterns
  43. The Gutsy Girl: A Modern Manifesto for Bravery, Perseverance, and Breaking the Tyranny of Perfection

February 2016

  1. Gardening and the Secret of Happiness
  2. Arthur Rackham’s Rare and Revolutionary 1917 Illustrations for the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales
  3. The Science of Why February 29 Exists and Poet Jane Hirshfield’s Ode to the Leap Day
  4. The Angels and Demons of Genius: Robert Lowell on What It’s Like to Be Bipolar
  5. Havelock Ellis on the Function of Taboos, Their Vital Role in Community, and How They Bolster the Discipline of Compassion
  6. The Tragic Necessity of Human Life: Willa Cather on Relationships and How Our Formative Family Dynamics Imprint Us
  7. Anthony Burgess on the Magical Moment He Fell in Love with Music as a Little Boy
  8. Iris Murdoch on Love and Chance
  9. Walt Whitman on How Literature Bolsters Democracy and Why a Robust Society Is a Feminist Society
  10. Artist Agnes Martin on Inspiration, Interruptions, Cultivating a Creative Atmosphere, and the Only Type of Person You Should Allow Into Your Studio
  11. W.E.B. Dubois’s Magnificent Letter of Advice to His Teenage Daughter
  12. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Exquisite Polyamorous Love Letters from the 1920s
  13. Umberto Eco on the Future of the Book
  14. The Enchantment of Mathematics
  15. John Keats’s Exquisite Love Letter to Fanny Brawne
  16. The Story of How Alice in Wonderland Was Born and Amanda Palmer’s Magnificent Brass Band Cover of “White Rabbit”
  17. James Baldwin on the Revelation That Taught Him How to Truly See
  18. Why We Read: Polish Poet and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on What Books Do for the Human Spirit
  19. The Hum of the Universe: Shonda Rhimes on Creative Burnout, the Hamster Wheel of Success, and Reclaiming Who We Are from the Workaholic Grip of What We Do
  20. Weathering: Poet Fleur Adcock’s Sublime Eulogy for Growing Older
  21. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Story Behind Newton’s Famous Metaphor for How Knowledge Progresses
  22. What Makes an Original: Psychologist Adam Grant on the Paradox of Achievement and How Motivated Dissatisfaction Fuels Creativity
  23. 9 Books About the Many Meanings of Time: A TED Bookstore Collaboration
  24. Anna Dostoyevskaya on the Secret to a Happy Marriage: Wisdom from One of History’s Truest and Most Beautiful Loves
  25. What Makes the Octopus and Its Consciousness So Extraordinary
  26. Seneca on Overcoming Fear and the Surest Strategy for Protecting Yourself from Misfortune
  27. Lou Andreas-Salomé, the World’s First Woman Psychoanalyst, on Creativity and the Relationship Between the Mind and the Body, in Letters to Rilke
  28. Charles Darwin’s Touching Letter of Appreciation to His Best Friend and Greatest Champion
  29. The Life of the Mind: Oliver Sacks’s 121 Formative and Favorite Books from a Lifetime of Reading
  30. Art as Experience: John Dewey on Why the Rhythmic Highs and Lows of Life Are Essential to Its Creative Completeness
  31. Edith Wharton on How to Live with Unassailable Serenity
  32. Physicist and Writer Alan Lightman on the Shared Psychology of Creative Breakthrough in Art and Science
  33. What Depression Is Really Like
  34. Freud on Memory, How Childhood Imprints the Subconscious, and Why We Dream
  35. James Baldwin’s Advice on Writing
  36. Elizabeth Bishop on Why Everyone Should Experience at Least One Long Period of Solitude in Life
  37. How Mendeleev Invented His Periodic Table in a Dream
  38. Strung Out In Heaven: Amanda Palmer on Patronage vs. Commerce, Art as Non-Ownable Nourishment, and the Story Behind Her Bowie String Quartet Tribute
  39. William S. Burroughs on Love
  40. Civil Rights Legend Rosa Parks on the Meaning of Life
  41. Patti Smith, Umberto Eco, and Other Celebrated Contemporary Authors Offer Their Advice to Aspiring Writers
  42. Simone Weil on the Relationship Between Our Rights and Our Responsibilities
  43. Mendelssohn on Creative Integrity and the Highest Satisfaction for the Artist
  44. James Joyce’s Love Letters
  45. Trailblazing Astronaut and Physicist Sally Ride in Conversation with Gloria Steinem About Gender in Science and How Lazy Media Portrayals Perpetuate Stereotypes
  46. Madness and Genius: Cosmologist Janna Levin on the Vitalizing Power of Obsessiveness, from Newton to Einstein
  47. How Arthur Rackham’s 1907 Drawings for Alice in Wonderland Revolutionized the Carroll Classic, the Technology of Book Art, and the Economics of Illustration
  48. Keats on the Joy of Singledom and How Solitude Opens Our Creative Channels to Truth and Beauty

January 2016

  1. The MoMA Cookbook: Vintage Recipes and Reflections on Food by Salvador Dalí, Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, and Other Great Artists
  2. André Gide on Growing Happier as We Grow Older and Using Mortality as a Mobilizing Force for Creative Work
  3. Harvard Social Psychologist Amy Cuddy on Mastering the Antidote to Anxiety, Self-Consciousness, and Impostor Syndrome
  4. How to Treat the Symptoms of a Rising Reputation: David Hume on the Only Adequate Response to Haters
  5. Why We Write About Ourselves: Some of Today’s Most Celebrated Writers on the Art of Telling Personal Stories That Unravel Universal Truth
  6. Mozart’s Daily Routine
  7. Iris Murdoch on the Fluidity of Gender and Sexuality: Her Intensely Beautiful Love Letters to Brigid Brophy
  8. How You Spend Your Life: A Cinematic Sum of the Hours, Days, and Years Spent on Mundane Activities
  9. Why Can’t You Remember Your Future? Physicist Paul Davies on the Puzzlement of Why We Experience Time as Linear
  10. How Aubrey Beardsley’s Visionary Illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” Subverted Victorian Gender Norms and Revolutionized the Graphic Arts
  11. Believe the Praiser and Dismiss the Praise: Donald Hall’s Advice on Writing
  12. Frida Kahlo on How Love Amplifies Beauty: Her Breathtaking Tribute to Diego Rivera
  13. Einstein on Grief, Time, Eternity, and the Privilege of Old Age: His Beautiful Letter to the Bereaved Queen of Belgium
  14. The Eternal Child Inside: Maurice Sendak on Storytelling and Creativity
  15. Artist Anne Truitt on Vulnerability, the Price of Integrity, and What Sustains the Creative Spirit
  16. The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story
  17. Yoko Ono’s Playful and Philosophical Action-Poems About How to Live with Greater Attentiveness to the World
  18. Seamus Heaney’s Advice on Life
  19. Cosmic Solitude: Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on How the Prospect of Being Alone in the Universe Can Make Us Better Stewards of Our Humanity
  20. Advice from My 80-Year-Old Self: An Artist’s Bittersweet Legacy of Real Wisdom from Strangers Ages 7 to 88
  21. Intuition of the Instant: French Philosopher Gaston Bachelard on Our Paradoxical Experience of Time
  22. J.R.R. Tolkien Reads from The Lord of the Rings and Sings “Sam’s Rhyme of the Troll” in a Rare Recording
  23. Whatever Happened to My Sister? An Assuring Illustrated Antidote to the Disorientation of Being a Teenager’s Younger Sibling
  24. Galileo on Why We Read and How Books Give Us Superhuman Powers
  25. The Brownstone: Trailblazing Graphic Designer Paula Scher’s Lovely Vintage Children’s Book About Living with Each Other’s Differences
  26. When Breath Becomes Air: A Young Neurosurgeon Examines the Meaning of Life as He Faces His Death
  27. The Confidence Game: What Con Artists Reveal About the Psychology of Trust and Why Even the Most Rational of Us Are Susceptible to Deception
  28. Julian Fellowes on the Paradox of Infatuation and How the Delicious Delusion of Lust Hijacks Our Experience of Love
  29. What Is an Emotion? William James’s Revolutionary 1884 Theory of How Our Bodies Affect Our Feelings
  30. John O’Donohue on the Restlessness at the Heart of Creativity and the Paradox of Belonging
  31. Kenny’s Window: Maurice Sendak’s Forgotten Philosophical Children’s Book About Love, Loneliness, and Knowing What You Really Want
  32. The Swan and the Blue Sail: Patti Smith on Creativity
  33. Donald Hall on Growing Old and Our Cultural Attitude Toward the Elderly
  34. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on Human Dignity and the Nuanced Relationship Between Agency and Victimhood
  35. Kahlil Gibran on the Seeming Self vs. the Authentic Self
  36. Gwendolyn Brooks’s Trailblazing Vintage Poems for Kids, Celebrating Diversity and the Universal Spirit of Childhood
  37. Something Deeply Hidden Behind Things: Einstein on Wonderment and the Nature of the Human Mind
  38. Hemingway’s Advice on Writing, Ambition, and His Reading List of Essential Books for Aspiring Writers
  39. Elevating Resolutions for the New Year Inspired by Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds
  40. A Darkly Delightful 1905 Poem Celebrating Punctuation, Newly Illustrated in Silkscreened Typographic Art

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