Young Barack Obama on What His Mother Taught Him About Love

“Perhaps that’s how any love begins, impulses and cloudy images that allow us to break across our solitude, and then, if we’re lucky, are finally transformed into something firmer.”

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A Cross-Cultural Bridge of Kinship and Mutual Appreciation: The Moving Correspondence of Albert Camus and Boris Pasternak

“It is false to say that frontiers do not exist. They do exist, temporarily. But at the same time there exists a force of creativity and truth uniting us all, in humility and in pride at the same time.”

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Auden on Writing, Originality, Self-Criticism, and How to Be a Good Reader

“It would only be necessary for a writer to secure universal popularity if imagination and intelligence were equally distributed among all men.”

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The Evolution of the Book, Animated

From stretched animal skins to metal alloys to pixels, an inquiry into what makes a book.

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Strange Trees: An Illustrated Atlas of the World’s Arboreal Wonders

From the cocoa tree that gives us chocolate to the Philippines’ rainbow tree, a global tour of rooted marvels.

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