Armed with old bones and new DNA sequencing technology, scientists are getting a much better understanding of the prehistory of the human species, writes Matt Ridley.
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Forget the competitive dads. To teach children about baseball—and life—a coach looks to their moms for help.
Alison Gopnik considers attachments and loyalty—in real life and in the behavior of the Soviet spies Philip and Elizabeth Jennings in ‘The Americans.’
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Joe Queenan is tired of email spam that makes him feel bad. His advice: Send him something that will cheer him up.
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A brief history of pastoral poetry and prose, from Virgil to Wordsworth, Thoreau and Yeats.
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Report says the phrase ‘Third World’ had its start at a 1955 conference, but the words grew out of the work of French social scientists.
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A difficult-to-duplicate invisible ink could make counterfeiting of bank notes very difficult, scientists at Northwestern University say.
A new exhibit at New York’s Cooper Hewitt surveys posters through the decades.
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Inspired by a book by Yuval Noah Harari, a Jerusalem museum is celebrating its first half-century with a look at humanity, from ancient artifacts to contemporary works.
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Ronald Reagan’s 1985 speech at Bergen-Belsen was imbued with genuine, rather than staged, emotion.
“Gypsy,” a song by Fleetwood Mac, stirs the soul of interior designer Charlotte Moss and gives her more confidence to take chances.
Summer work taught teens about life, labor and their place in the universe. That lesson seems lost today, writes Dave Shiflett.
The artist known for gunpowder drawings and “explosion events” on his latest shows and what today’s Chinese art is missing.
Dan Neil takes a white-knuckle spin in the three-wheeled Dymaxion car dreamed up in the 1930s by the legendary architect.
Whether David Cameron or Ed Miliband comes out ahead on May 7, they will probably need a coalition partner. But which one?
The language we speak can facilitate or constrain thinking, says Robert M. Sapolsky. One surprising effect is on hurricane alerts.
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From swimming to board meetings to a simulated flight into space.
Marc Koska found his calling by working on a one-use-only device that can prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis.
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Dan Ariely answers readers’ questions on luxury purchases, meaningful work and dinner etiquette.
A new book by Pieter van Dokkum looks at the life stages of the dragonfly.
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Medical ethics are at odds with the ideal of human perfection in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Birthmark.’
To get in touch with herself, celebrity chef April Bloomfield turns to a Kate Bush song from her childhood, ‘Under the Ivy’
As some of her many artworks go on view in Paris, Doris Fisher, co-founder of the Gap, talks about her collection.
The phrase “opt out” evokes controversies over school tests and vaccines—and poses a grammatical problem.
Berlin’s German Historical Museum is showing ‘1945: Defeat. Liberation. New Beginning,’ which conjures up postwar Europe via the biographies of 36 people.
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The lawn is arguably the most foolish, destructive, annoying entity on Earth, writes Joe Queenan.
A new biography explores the outrageous lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley.
The Saturday Essay: With some 570 days left until Election Day, the race for president has very much started—to the dismay of many, writes Michael Barone. How the process can be fixed.
The planetary scientist from the SETI Institute hunts for signs of microbial life on Mars—and imagines humans living there one day.
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The epic ‘Changing Light at Sandover’ was inspired by a first-century Greek Jew whom James Merrill contacted through a Ouija board.
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Edward Abbey was ‘the least pious of environmentalists,’ fond of guns and tossing his beer cans by the side of the road—yet his rage inspired eco-terrorism. Wallace Stegner’s words helped frame the 1964 Wilderness Act and gave a Westerner’s view on the national soul.
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Slipping in and out of consciousness as he neared death, Saul Bellow opened his eyes and asked aloud: ‘Was I a man or was I a jerk?’
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A novel unorthodox in structure but extremely traditional in its admiration for the ‘greatest generation.’
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With the Northern public eager to ‘bring the boys home,’ the federal forces occupying the South were reduced from 200,000 in 1865 to a mere 28,000 at the end of 1866.
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Is it wrong to be captivated by a great thinker’s personality, rather than the drier stuff of résumés?
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Who needs a state, once we have perfectly sorted social networks?
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In 1947 Erwin Schrödinger boasted of a big new result that would beat his sometime collaborator Albert Einstein. They were both wrong.
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As a motorcycle-loving young doctor, Oliver Sacks descended into loneliness and drug addiction. The wild energies were tamed by swimming and book-writing.
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Orson Welles struggled to make a film about a filmmaker who is struggling to make a film.
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Wordsworth and Coleridge have nothing on the native son of the Lake District who tends sheep and also writes like a dream.
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The author of ‘Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life’ recommends biographies of notable first ladies.
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The grammar in too many children’s books is surprisingly careless.
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Fascist Italy believed sex education ‘sapped the virility’ of the nation. Postwar Sweden encouraged it to limit the size of families.
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In a country with more than 17 million people who are visually impaired, there are but a few dozen schools for the blind. Forced to work for a living in the absence of an adequate welfare system, they must therefore seek out the few career options available to them. One of these is work as a masseur.
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Text messages, pop-ups, robocalls—there is no shortage of claims on our attention. How can we reclaim our interior lives?
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The U.S. government is the most open in the history of the world—but it still keeps far too many things secret.
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By 1934, with all of the Nazis’ enemies defeated or intimidated, concentration had lost its original purpose. But Himmler was ready with a new rationale: The camps could serve as a tool to improve the German race.
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After three decades of brilliant stories, Joseph Mitchell worked for 30 more years without publishing a word.
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About 70% of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans held were citizens. Some 2,300 would fight for their country.
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These days a president’s true beliefs and convictions are obscured by anodyne, ecumenical rhetoric.
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For Mohammed Ali Jinnah. partition was a triumph. For his longtime rival, Gandhi, it was a ‘spiritual tragedy.’
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The narrator admires the way that rock musicians live on the edge; it’s the way he wants to live too.
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Meghan Cox Gurdon reviews Joohee Yoon’s “Beastly Verse”; Kenneth Kraegel’s “The Song of Delphine”; Eve Bunting’s “Yard Sale” and Bimba Landmann’s “Just for Today.”
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Readers ‘are just going to have to get used to the frank language of bodily functions,’ Kramer warns.
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‘The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them,’ the painter said.
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Musicians, black or white, needed to be versatile. Getting a gig often trumped personal attitudes.
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Holding a great gray owl is ‘similar to holding a big down pillow with a fresh sweet potato in the middle.’
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The author of “Ministers at War: Winston Churchill and His War Cabinet” recommends books about the men who helped win World War II.
—Join the Journal Community's WSJ Reading Group to discuss books and authors.“What books are you reading now?”
That bottle of Angostura bitters that’s lasted you through three presidents? Put it to work in the kitchen with these recipes for asparagus salad with bitters vinaigrette and strawberry fool with bitters.
The latest, most summery way to wear the plaid shirt is more Beach Boys and less grunge, finds Alexa Brazilian.
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As the Met readies its exhibit about China’s influence on western fashion, here is the season’s best examples of clothing and accessories whose designers took their cues from faraway lands.
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The Citroën DS is technically unsurpassed, completely inimitable, has a great back story and is the most beautiful car of all time, writes Dan Neil.
This month, a full-size commentary on James McNeill Whistler’s iconic Peacock Room goes on display at the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C.
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Floyd Mayweather looks to avoid joining the long line of ‘invincible’ fighters that eventually stumbled.
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Best-selling books, week ended April 19, with data from Nielsen BookScan.
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A review of “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande and “A Tour of Bones” by Denise Inge. From the Times Literary Supplement.
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James Campbell on clichés worth their salt, and the decline of poetry.
“What books are you reading to help you through the financial crisis?”
—James Freeman on Charles Gasparino's new book about the fall of Wall Street“At the heart of 'The Sellout' is its own irksome inquiry: Why did so many large and prestigious institutions make disastrous bets on American mortgages?”