Hamnet

Hamnet

Agnes’s head is pressed against the smooth flank of the cow as she milks. Joan hears the psht-psht-u-psht of milk jetting into the pail. At the sound of Joan’s cry, the cow shifts and Agnes lifts her cheek and turns to look at her stepmother, a wary expression on her...
Eichmann in Jerusalem

Eichmann in Jerusalem

A Report On The Banality Of Evil For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from...
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

The Most Beautiful of Theories In his youth Albert Einstein spent a year loafing aimlessly. You don’t get anywhere by not “wasting” time—something, unfortunately, that the parents of teenagers tend frequently to forget. He was in Pavia. He had joined his family,...
Stoner

Stoner

Masters, holding aloft a hard-boiled egg from the free lunch as if it were a crystal ball, said, “Have you gentlemen ever considered the question of the true nature of the University? Mr. Stoner? Mr. Finch?” Smiling, they shook their heads. “I’ll bet you haven’t....