Ralph Waldo Emerson

For much of our clerisy, the nation is an anachronism or disgrace.

The long and complicated life of Kipling's famous poem.

On the mournful threads connecting his half-century in politics.

Reading recommendations from a lifelong education.

The horrors of the fugitive slave laws, the costs of union, and the value of comity.

As he told a friend years later, "the kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips."

The Trump administration is working to undo one of the guiding principles of U.S. conservation.

In his 2-million-word journal, the transcendentalist balanced poetic wonder and scientific rigor as he explored the natural world.

Not yet—but it has precious few supporters on either the left or the right.

Freeing Thoreau from layers of caricature that have long distorted his legacy.

Snobbish elitism will hurt their cause.

A new book argues that Darwin failed to capture the American imagination because of the untimely death of Henry David Thoreau.

How America's persistent preference for brash boys over "sivilizing" women fueled the candidacy of Donald Trump.

Imported from Europe, the custom of leaving gratuities began spreading in the U.S. post-Civil War. It was loathed as a master-serf custom.

The rise of liberal religion in the United States.

Reflections on the ahistorical, aristocratic, and romanticist approach to "nature" elevated by John Muir, and by his admirer, Ken Burns.

In 1908, Eugene Debs eulogized John Brown as America's "greatest liberator," vowing the Socialist Party would continue Brown's work. We publish it here in full.

An editorial to the "National Anti-Slavery Standard," republished in "Letters from New York."