Reading between the lines.

If you'd like to sort this department listing by headline, author or date, please use the Slate search.

• The Secret of The Canterbury Tales The tellers get to mock their own tales.
  Adam Kirsch Dec. 29, 2008
  
• Cutting Through the Smog What L.A.'s story can teach the rest of us.
  Amanda Fortini Dec. 22, 2008
  
• Pad Out Your Amazon Wish List Slate picks the best books of 2008.
  Dec. 16, 2008
  
• Under the Sign of Sontag The intellectual's greatest project: herself.
  Katie Roiphe Dec. 14, 2008
  
• Russia's Usable Past A strange journey into the historical archives.
  Anne Applebaum Dec. 8, 2008
  
• Of Ants and Men Compare the two civilizations, and who wins?
  Christine Kenneally Dec. 1, 2008
  
• Florence Nightingale's Fever Diagnose this driven nurse at your own risk.
  Michael Chase-Levenson Nov. 24, 2008
  
• How To Read the Quran A new translation captures the confusion.
  Reza Aslan Nov. 20, 2008
  
• The Dark Matter of Our Cherished Document What you see in the Constitution isn't what you get.
  Dahlia Lithwick Nov. 17, 2008
  
• Downsizing Andrew Jackson Why the warrior president is no hero for our polarized times.
  Louis P. Masur Nov. 10, 2008
  
• Slouching Towards Santa Teresa Roberto Bolaño's utterly strange masterpiece.
  Adam Kirsch Nov. 3, 2008
  
• Making Comics After Mauschwitz Art Spiegelman in search of a second act.
  Sarah Boxer Oct. 28, 2008
  
• Emily Post's Secret How a disastrous marriage drove her to etiquette.
  Laura Shapiro Oct. 22, 2008
  
• Minds in the Toilet There's a sewage crisis, so hold your nose and think hard.
  Johann Hari Oct. 20, 2008
  
• A Dolphin or a Lonely Transvestite? How best to talk about English in English.
  Christine Kenneally Oct. 13, 2008
  
• The Woman Who Never Stopped Talking The secret of Madame de Stael's success.
  Stacy Schiff Oct. 6, 2008
  
• Cheney's Handiwork Unveiling his methods, and some of his motives.
  David Greenberg Oct. 3, 2008
  
• Is Humanitarian Intervention Dead? History offers some sobering lessons.
  Samantha Power Sept. 29, 2008
  
• Jefferson's Other Family His concubine was also his wife's half-sister.
  François Furstenberg Sept. 23, 2008
  
• Country for Old Men David Lodge's touch wavers when the topic is aging.
  Peter D. Kramer Sept. 17, 2008
  
• Philip Roth's Nightmare And you thought Jewish repression was bad …
  Jonathan Rosen Sept. 15, 2008
  
• It's Time To Turn Down the Heat What Thomas Friedman's doomsday environmental scenario gets wrong—and right.
  Gregg Easterbrook Sept. 8, 2008
  
• How Children Stop Failing It takes a village to raise a school.
  Sara Mosle Sept. 2, 2008
  
• Car Nation Are drivers the source of, or the solution to, traffic hell?
  Michael Agger Aug. 25, 2008
  
• The American John Milton The poet and the power of extraordinary speech.
  Robert Pinsky Aug. 18, 2008
  
• What's Wrong With Environmental Alarmism How to mobilize, but not paralyze, the public with fear.
  Annie Murphy Paul Aug. 11, 2008
  
• The Vanishing City The life and death of Beijing's alleys.
  Rob Gifford Aug. 7, 2008
  
• Ready, Get Self, Go! China's younger generation discovers the identity crisis.
  Ann Hulbert Aug. 5, 2008
  
• The Party vs. the People What might the new populist protest in China portend?
  Minxin Pei Aug. 5, 2008
  
• China's Tell-Nothing Ethos What the man on Mao's right doesn't say.
  Andrew J. Nathan Aug. 5, 2008
  
• Rock the Mullahs Can heavy metal music help transform the Middle East?
  Reza Aslan July 28, 2008
  
• The Care and Feeding of Fiction James Wood's critical manifesto is firm, yet flexible.
  Judith Shulevitz July 22, 2008
  
• Move Over, Marx How too many property rights wreck the market.
  Tim Wu July 14, 2008
  
• Pain Beyond Words A poet's quest to capture her excruciating illness.
  Amanda Fortini July 7, 2008
  
• What's in a Name? Everything, according to an amazing book about America.
  Matt Weiland June 30, 2008
  
• Why Implausibility Sells The strange quest to write history in the absence of evidence.
  Christopher Benfey June 23, 2008
  
• Liberalism in the Levant? One man's dreams suggest some lessons.
  Alexander Star June 16, 2008
  
• Why Me? The case against the sovereign self.
  Alan Wolfe June 9, 2008
  
• Whose Values Are They, Anyway? The peculiar politics of moral passion.
  K. Anthony Appiah May 27, 2008
  
• Teach for America Grows Up What TFA can teach the NCLB era.
  Sara Mosle May 19, 2008
  
• Taming Your Inner Homer Simpson How to opt out of our own stupid choices.
  Dahlia Lithwick May 12, 2008
  
• Pop Goes Christianity The deep contradictions of Christian popular culture.
  Hanna Rosin May 5, 2008
  
• Spring Books in Brief What Slate's reading this spring.
  John Swansburg May 2, 2008
  
• Best in Verse It's National Poetry Month—what should you read?
  Jordan Davis April 29, 2008
  
• Criminals Without Borders The revolution in smuggling and international crime.
  Moisés Naím April 28, 2008
  
• Cartoons Go to War Bill Mauldin's unflinching vision has yet to be beat.
  Ben Yagoda April 25, 2008
  
• Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Cleverest of Them All? Keith Gessen's great adventure.
  Judith Shulevitz April 21, 2008
  
• The Mirror of History What hinders historians from discovering the strangeness of the past?
  David A. Bell April 14, 2008
  
• Thesaurus Unbound If Roget's is becoming a relic, what lies ahead?
  Christine Kenneally April 7, 2008
  
• The New Global Nomads Jhumpa Lahiri and the perils of assimilation.
  Ann Hulbert April 3, 2008
  
• Greer Tames the Shrew A feminist icon rescues the Shakespeares' marriage.
  Laura Shapiro March 31, 2008
  
• The Liberation of Lying What Tobias Wolff gets and the frauds don't.
  Judith Shulevitz March 24, 2008
  
• What Slate's Reading This Month Book reviews in 300 words or less.
  Michael Agger March 17, 2008
  
• The Perfect Novel You've Never Heard Of Rediscovering Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo.
  Jim Lewis March 10, 2008
  
• Hollywood Archaeology What five Academy Award contenders can tell us about the '60s.
  Sarah Kerr March 4, 2008
  
• Dangerous Places What Sergio Vieira de Mello learned at the U.N.
  Paul Berman Feb. 25, 2008
  
• Why Flann O'Brien Is So Funny The unsung Irish genius who belongs up there with Joyce and Beckett.
  Nathaniel Rich Feb. 18, 2008
  
• Prozac Nation? The returns aren't in.
  Peter D. Kramer Feb. 11, 2008
  
• Outlaws in the Outback Peter Carey's Australian secrets.
  Claire Dederer Feb. 4, 2008
  
• Winter Books What Slate is reading this winter.
  Troy Patterson Feb. 1, 2008
  
• Am I a Fascist? Jonah Goldberg's tendentious history of liberalism.
  Timothy Noah Jan. 28, 2008
  
• The Bonds of Race Who is, and isn't, a sellout?
  Alan Wolfe Jan. 20, 2008
  
• The Psychosomatic Secret The unscientific allure of mind-body medicine.
  Amanda Schaffer Jan. 14, 2008
  
• National Life After Death Civil War carnage and the quest for American identity.
  Richard Wightman Fox Jan. 7, 2008