What is it like to have no gift, no gag, no game at all, when your twentieth anniversary comes up … More
Author: editorskinner
AIDS History Project
The NEH-supported AIDS History Project focuses on how the city of San Francisco experienced and responded to this terrible disease.
First Draft of the King James Bible
An interview in Humanities magazine with scholar Jeffrey Alan Miller, MacArthur “genius” drant winner, and NEH research fellow.
My tour of the new World Trade Center
A while back, I spent an incredible day with Judith Dupre, author of an excellent large-scale book about One World … More
John Simpson, Word Detective
Was impressed by this lexicographical memoir by former OED editor John Simpson. I have read enough writing by lexicographers to … More
On Charles McCarry
I have been reading McCarry’s latest, The Mulberry Bush, which made me think I should post my 2009 profile of … More
Edmund Wilson and the Rise of American Lit
For several years, I have had a hunger to write this piece about the arrival of the Library of America … More
Verily: Men Versus Women
Women are more correct and more with-it: A piece inspired by reading Matt Gordon’s primer on the work of the … More
The Story of Cool
My Humanities essay on the rise of cool, the American slang term that took on new life beginning in the … More
The Story of Ain’t in NYT Acrostic
I am not an acrostic afficianado, but was delighted to learn there is a type of crossword that is used … More