Arts & Culture
Welcome to the commodity biopic
These movies about influential consumer objects aren’t really origin stories at all.
Sing a rights-cleared song to the Lord
“Each report we receive at ONE LICENSE turns into a royalty payment,” says Brenna Cronin, “and those payments are someone’s livelihood.”
The book editor who inadvertently helped empty America’s pews
Stephen Prothero’s biography of Eugene Exman reveals how the bestsellers he acquired taught people to be spiritual but not religious.
The women of midcentury moral philosophy
Two new books explore the intertwined scholarship and friendship of Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, and Mary Midgley.
Tom Stoppard gets personal
Leopoldstadt grapples with the 86-year-old playwright’s Jewish roots and his fear about the direction of our society.
It’s me, Margaret’s mom
Judy Blume’s gift to the world is her insistence that young people can be trusted as capable moral agents.
Science fiction writers imagine the way out
Jesus’ parables give us space to see that something else is possible. Writers of new worlds put flesh on these bones.
Meet Gil, the protector
The protagonist of Lydia Millet’s new novel is like a mother hen, both to his neighbors and to the birds.