What’s So Bad About Asking Where Humans Came From?
Human origin stories have often been used for nefarious purposes. That doesn’t mean they are worthless.
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Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Sources: Christophe Lehenaff / Getty; Xia Yuan / Getty. Human History Gets a Rewrite
A brilliant new account upends bedrock assumptions about 30,000 years of change.
Illustration by Rodrigo Corral. Sources: Hugh Sitton / Getty; Been There YB / Shutterstock J. M. Coetzee’s Unsettling Trilogy About a Possibly Divine Boy
The novelist asks how we recognize the truth when it enters the world.
Karolis Strautniekas In Defense of Facts
A new history of the essay gets the genre all wrong, and in the process endorses a misleading idea of knowledge.
Javier Jaén Where Have You Gone, Annie Dillard?
Why the author has become so much less prolific over the past 17 years
Emmanuel Polanco Why Primo Levi Survives
His will to bear witness, and record the hellish particularity of the Holocaust, helped save his life in Auschwitz. It also inspired the writing he will be remembered for.
Grafilu The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it?
Javier Jaén How the Novel Made the Modern World
And how the modern world unmade the novel
The Jewish Mark Twain
The writer who inspired Fiddler on the Roof shouldn’t be mistaken for a mere spinner of artless folktales.
Yivo Institute
