CATEGORIES

NOTE TO SELVES

The Sonoran Desert, which covers much of the southwestern United States, is a vast expanse of arid earth where cartoonish entities-roadrunners, tumbleweeds, telephone-pole-tall succulents make occasional appearances.

THE ORCHESTRA IS THE STAR

The Berlin Philharmonic doesn't need a domineering maestro.

HEAD CASE

Paul Valéry's ascetic modernism.

LOVE FOR SALE

When America tried to get on top of the sex trade.

EACH OTHER'S BACK

\"Nickel Boys.\"

NO ROOM FOR A MASTERPIECE

Rashid Johnson's art of masculine vulnerability is going to the Guggenheim.

THE BATTLE FOR FRANCE

President Emmanuel Macron has plunged the country into chaos.

BOOK A STRESS-FREE GETAWAY

Recently refurbished houseboat. Sleeps four guests comfortably, and many more less comfortably, but it's definitely doable and safe, though no jumping all at once, please.

LEG WORK

A surgeon and an engineer reimagine the prosthetic limb.

BASIC INSTINCT

A feminist director takes on the erotic thriller.

NO WAY BACK

The resurgence, in the past decade, of Paul Schrader as one of the most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary movie directors is part of a bigger trend: the self-reinvention of Hollywood auteurs as independent filmmakers.

PRIMORDIAL SORROW

\"All Life Long,\" the title of the most recent album by the composer and organist Kali Malone, is taken from a poem by the British Symbolist author Arthur Symons: \"The heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,/ All life long crying without avail,/As the water all night long is crying to me.\"

CHOPPED AND STEWED

The other day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled back the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple across West Africa.

TOUCH WOOD

What do people do all day? My daughter loves to read Richard Scarry's book of that title, though she generally skips ahead to the hospital pages.

HELLO, HEARTBREAK

Heartbreak cures are as old as time, or at least as old as the Common Era.

ENEMY OF THE STATE

Javier Milei's plan to remake Argentina begins with waging war on the government.

THE CHOOSING ONES

The saga of my Jewish conversion began twenty-five years ago, when I got engaged to my first husband.

OBSCURE FAMILIAL RELATIONS, EXPLAINED FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Children who share only one parent are half siblings. Children who have been bisected via a tragic logging accident are also half siblings, but in a different way.

BADDIE ISSUES

\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"

LET'S MAKE A DEAL

\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"

ANTI HEROES

\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.

FELLOW-TRAVELLERS

The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.

NOW YOU SEE ME

John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.

PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO

Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.

WILD SIDE

Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?

GETTING A GRIP

Robots learn to use their hands.

WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE

In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.

DEADLINE EXTENSION

Old age, reborn.

THE TEXAS EXODUS

Amid stringent abortion laws, ob-gyns are fleeing the state.

GET IT TOGETHER

In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.