Benjamin D. R. Hellings— As custodian and curator of the Yale University Art Gallery’s numismatic collection, I have the responsibility to oversee approximately 200,000 objects: coins, medals, tokens, bank notes, and other related works. The Gallery’s is the largest numismatic collection at any university in the country, and it includes countless rarities and masterpieces. Yet one particular work stands out. Produced in 1839, the Naseby Cup is one of the most exceptional numismatic objects in the world. Its unique blend of numismatic and decorative arts, together with its compelling history, i ..read more

Alexandra Stark— On October 8, 2016, an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition struck a crowded funeral hall in Sanaa, Yemen, killing at least 140 people and wounding an additional 600, including children. The strike was shocking to many Americans, not only because of the tragic death toll, but because of how it happened: according to Human Rights Watch, remnants of a U.S.-manufactured bomb were identified at the site. This was eight years after President Obama was elected with the promise that he would end the United States’ “dumb wars” in the Middle East. So how, and why, was a U.S.-made weapo ..read more

It needs to be said that, unlike some more recent cultures, the joy-loving and disarmingly honest ancient Greeks did not believe that suffering ennobled, educated, or improved the character of the sufferer in any sense whatsoever. They thought suffering was terrible, with no redeeming features, and needed to be avoided at all costs. They did not believe that suffering was distributed providentially: they were well aware that good people often suffered, and bad people had been known to die at advanced ages without apparently suffering much at all. As Philoctetes says in reference to the cynical ..read more

Sophus Helle— Authors in antiquity knew from prolonged experience the labor that is needed to carry a text through time. Books do not move across centuries on their own. They must be moved, and they are moved by the hard work of copyists and editors, printers and proselytizers, translators and versifiers, singers and booksellers, teachers and students, readers and listeners. No written material, not even the comparatively durable clay of the Sumerians, survives the passing of time entirely unaffected: if books are not attended to, they crumble and decay. It takes many hands, mouths, ears, and ..read more

Space has fascinated authors, scientists, storytellers, and children alike. From a brief history of the moon to a collection of diverse stories connected to the stars, our Space Day reading list will deepen your love and appreciation of the cosmos. Asteroids How Love, Fear, and Greed Will Determine Our Future in Space Martin Elvis A unique, wide-ranging examination of asteroid exploration and our future in space BUY Reaching for the Moon A Short History of the Space Race Roger D Launius A history of the space race explores the lives of both Soviet and American engineers BUY Moon A Br ..read more

Richard Sieburth— Autobiography and autofiction are all the rage in France, viz. Annie Ernaux’s recent Nobel Prize.  Anticipating this trend, ex-surrealist Michel Leiris devoted much of his literary career to experiments in self-portraiture. Francis Bacon’s famous dismantling of Leiris’s face, featured on the cover of Frail Riffs, reveals the author peering out from behind the mask of his sincerity. The title of his four-volume autobiography is The Rules of the Game—Leiris the verbal card shark (and professional anthropologist) being only all too aware that without rules, there would be n ..read more

Peter Burke— Since the 1990s, a new kind of history has been flourishing: the history of knowledge—or better, the history of different kinds of knowledge, knowledges in the plural. Turning a topic upside down often proves to be a good way to take a fresh look at it, as historians of memory discovered when they decided to include forgetting in their research. Ignorance is usually defined as an absence of knowledge, and writing the history of an absence raises obvious problems. As some may wonder, what are the sources for the history of what isn’t there? One answer to this question is to adopt a ..read more

Ward Toward is the 118th volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, in which Cindy Juyoung Ok moves assuredly between spaces—from the psych ward to a prison cell, from divided countries to hospice wards. She plumbs these institutions of constraint, ward to ward, and the role of each reality’s language, word to word, as she uncovers fractured private codes and shares them in argument, song, and prayer. Join us as we reflect on the role poetry plays in our lives and appreciate the contributions of the poets who have enriched us with a selection of excerpts for National Poetry Month. Home Ward ..read more

Rachel S. Gross— In the 1970s, outdoor clothing and equipment catalogs were full of products that might have seemed completely unrelated to the outdoors a decade earlier. One old-school REI (Recreational Equipment, Incorporated) fan was annoyed that people were wearing chic outdoor clothing beyond the trail. “A full page of walking shoes. For walking on trails?” he asked in 1979. “No, to walk to Pioneer Square or Fisherman’s Wharf or Greenwich Village, attired in the REI Fashion Line, for quiche and a glass of white wine.”1 For this customer, wearing REI shoes to an upscale neighborhood for an ..read more

Despina Stratigakos— How I wish this book had existed when I was a student pursuing the fugitive histories of women architects! In the 1990s publications on women in architecture were rare, and few libraries had them on their bookshelves. When I traveled to Europe to begin dissertation research on Germany’s first women architects, I planned to visit archives and then write about what I had found. I never expected that their shelves would be bare as well. For months, I traveled from archive to archive, only to hear the same response: we have no collections on women architects. With my funding r ..read more