You Don’t Have the Right

To believe whatever you want to.

How the Enlightenment Ends

With The Casebook of Doctor Sababa. Human society is unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.

Bach at the Burger King

Opera at Westwood Lake.

Not your Tibetan Buddhism

Behind the beatific image of Tibetan Buddhism lies a dark, complicated reality. 

European Explorers knew California was Not an Island as Early as 1529

So why did they resume depicting it as one on their maps around 1622? 

Your Success isn’t Due to Free Will

Luck determines everything.

Ancient Rome’s Collapse Is Written Into Arctic Ice

Thanks to the exhaust of its massive coin-making operation, we can track the history of Rome, preserved in Greenland’s ice sheet.

Coming Soon

To a vivid imagination near you...

People Crave Silence, Yet are Unnerved by It

Some authors pursue silence in nets of words.

Has Wine Gone Bad?

Advocates say that everything about the modern industry is ethically, ecologically and aesthetically wrong. Not here. 

What’s That Smell You’re Reading?

Words are not always what hold book lovers captive.

The Dying Days of the New West

Recent books about the American West turn the old frontier myth into a mirage. Except for Wagon Days.

From Memory to Myth

The Adventures of Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Tom Wolfe

Author of The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities, dies.

Pleistocene Rewilding

Restoring a Lost World in North America.

What Makes Good Writing Good?

It’s all in the ear. Starting my narration of The Bolthole audiobook.