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American

Humor
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Repetition is a mighty power in the domain of humor. I undertook to prove the truth of this forty years ago in San Francisco on the occasion of my second…

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In the Cage
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By Colin Richmond, from “Deliberation and Precipitation: Fresh Eggs, c. 1890–c. 1910,” published in the Winter 2014 issue of Common Knowledge. Richmond is professor emeritus of medieval history at the…

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Mostpeople’s Poet
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Is E. E. Cummings a serious writer?

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New Books
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It is inevitable that some readers will take from Evelyn Barish’s biography of the life and misdeeds of Paul de Man the notion that literary theory is a crock. The title…

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Tunnel Vision
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Will the Air Force kill its most effective weapon?

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Bad Romance
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One genre and a billion happy endings

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Changing Partners
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Can Hassan Rohani end the Iranian impasse?

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A Very Perfect Instrument
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The ferocity and failure of America’s sanctions apparatus

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Life as a Terrorist
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Uncovering my FBI file

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A Different Kind of Father
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By Jonathan Franzen, from a footnote to his translation of “Nestroy and Posterity,” a 1912 essay by the Austrian satirist, playwright, poet, aphorist, and critic Karl Kraus (1874–1936). In the…

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Last Request

From emails exchanged by employees of the U.S. State Department, an anonymous Iraqi man known here by the pseudonym Omar, and Omar’s brother. In 2011, Omar, who had worked as…

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September 2013

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