“Young Spice” Over the holidays, I was at my sister’s place. The youngest generation was racingabout the house, screaming “not…

My wife Cynthia occasionally interviews our kids, jotting down their answers inlittle journals. The questions are always like, What was…

Americans may be having fewer children, but we make a fetish of the ones we have. This is obvious to…

One Man’s Trash It was Big Trash Day in my neighborhood. Notices had gone out that the city’s garbage trucks…

The phrase “unaccompanied minor” conjures a very specific fantasy for parents of little children, one that has been shaped by…

A review of Matt Feeney’s Little Platoons in American Purpose, which is now part of Persuasion, in which I describe…

What is it like to have no gift, no gag, no game at all, when your twentieth anniversary comes up…

A while back, I spent an incredible day with Judith Dupre, author of an excellent large-scale book about One World…

Was impressed by this lexicographical memoir by former OED editor John Simpson. I have read enough writing by lexicographers to…

I have been reading McCarry’s latest, The Mulberry Bush, which made me think I should post my 2009 profile of…