But for many years now, Mignon Fogarty (“Grammar Girl”) has presided over the website and the holiday, and I am not alone in appreciating her balanced approach between language’s “is” and its “ought.” ...

On Roman theater, George Orwell, Esther before Ahasuerus, the borough of Queens & more from the world of culture.

On “The Day is Gone: 100 Years of New Objectivity,” at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

The first work was Ein Heldenleben, “A Hero’s Life,” by Richard Strauss. Who’s the hero of that one? Why, the composer ...

Max L. Feldman on “TIHANYI 140,” at the National Gallery of Hungary, Budapest.

Natasha Sumner does not answer that question in her latest book, Heroes of the Gale: A History of Fionn and the Fianna .She ...

But Alfred Chester’s 1962 complaint in Commentary was still largely valid decades later: “Updike has no sense of invention, ...

Editors’ note: To buy this and other classic New Criterion essays in stand-alone print format, see the reprint series in our bookstore. Since it is difficult, or rather impossible, to represent a ...

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. Despite all that, Zamyatin was lucky. Other writers who (to quote from the same letter) earned a “criminal name” ...

Editors’ note: This essay is adapted from The Golden Thread by Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins, to be published by Encounter Books in 2024. For the very element of unexpectedness in the events I ...