The Rise of CliffsNotes Cinema
Oversimplified literary remakes miss the point of the works they are adapting.
Culture
Why Justin Bieber Played YouTube Onstage for Thousands of People
The pop star transformed the normal act of browsing your laptop into something interesting—and unsettling.
The New Age of Performance Anxiety
With the rise of screen culture, all the world has stage fright.
Where Did ‘Let Them’ Come From?
Years before Mel Robbins published her best-selling self-help book, a struggling writer posted a poem with a similar message.
Nothing Is Scarier Than an Unmarried Woman
Weapons is about a classroom of missing children—and the young schoolteacher whom all the parents want to blame.
King of the Hill Now Looks Like a Fantasy
The sitcom returns with a vision of suburban America that’s harder to come by.
Dear James: Do I Need to Shut Up at Work?
I try to temper my natural brusqueness with watercooler niceties, but sometimes I can’t help but speak up.
No Parents Allowed
Before smartphones and social media, teenagers constructed their identity on the walls of their room.
A Cheat Code for Parents Isn’t Working Anymore
Deciding what’s enriching for children to watch requires more homework than ever.
Surface Support
A poem
The Judgments of Muriel Spark
The novelist liked playing God—a very capricious one.
Literature’s Enduring Obsession With Strange Sisters
In Xenobe Purvis’s novel, a brood of odd siblings illuminates the fears of their fellow villagers.
The Woman Who Perfected Flower Painting
The 17th-century painter Rachel Ruysch was once more famous than Vermeer.
Twenty Years After the Storm
What home meant before, and after, Hurricane Katrina