Nonfiction

Memoir

Writing

Unpublished journal entries
Annie Ernaux
Objects of Desire

My Screenshots

In search of lost memes
Sarah Thankam Mathews
The Moment

The Birthday Party No One Wants

Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial
Samuel Moyn
Essays

The End of Books

What happened when a dumpster arrived behind my university's library
Sheila Liming
Ideas

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years
Kathryn Lofton
Essays

Toni Morrison’s Native Figures

A new reading of race in her novels
Namwali Serpell

Browse

Nonfiction

From the Archives

Women's Rights: Unspeakable Issues in the Constitution

Nancy F. Cott
June 1, 1988
From the Archives

A Courier for Jacques Lacan

The psychoanalyst invited me for lunch at his Parisian apartment—and drew me into his orbit
Eileen Simpson
April 1, 1987
From the Archives

A. Philip Randolph

Remembering the civil rights leader and my friend of over four decades
Bayard Rustin
April 1, 1987
Polaroid of Francine du Plessix Gray
From the Archives

Charles Olson and an American Place

Francine du Plessix Gray
April 1, 1987
From the Archives

E. M. Forster

The novelist valued friendship above all else
Robert Giroux
April 1, 1987
From the Archives

Maugham

Mary Lee Settle
April 1, 1987
From the Archives

Meeting Matisse

I came looking for the genius behind La Ronde—and found a man sulking over old clippings
Quentin Bell
April 1, 1987
From the Archives

Retrospect: Poetry in Review

Penelope Laurans
December 1, 1985
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
From the Archives

Singing with the Fundamentalists

Annie Dillard
January 1, 1985
From the Archives

Revisionists Revised

Louis Menand
October 1, 1984