Adam Kirsch

Min Lee / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 In the spring of 1944, as the Second World War neared its turning point, the first skirmishes of the generational battle that would define postwar America were taking place in a lecture hall at Columbia University. When A [...]

After the rabbi’s game repeating back Of anecdotes he heard an hour before, But edited to bland endorsements like Those on a dating-service questionnaire— Funny, liked to travel, good with kids— How can he ask the mourners to believe In a [...]

The Gothic silhouette and flying spire Address the campus with a confidence Inherited from buttresses and choirs Adapted to the Catholic skies of France. If at the swinging summons of the bell The snow-blind distance gradually revealed A feudal Sund [...]

On the night of October 24, 1917, William Butler Yeats was just four days into an already inauspicious honeymoon. At fifty-two, he had married a twenty-five-year-old named Georgie Hyde-Lees, but only after proposing marriage first to his longtime lov [...]