Tom Vanderbilt

• Culture October 20, 2016

  “I am alarmed,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in “Walking,” his 1862 essay, “when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.” The point of his saunter had been to “forget all my morning occupations, and my obligations to society.” Alas: “It sometimes happens I cannot easily shake off the village.” His thoughts were elsewhere. With a gentle lashing of self­-reproach, he asks: “What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?”
• Culture March 19, 2010

  “How did people sit in the Middle Ages?” It is a remarkable question—disarmingly simple yet potentially sweeping. A precocious child might pose something of the sort to a flustered parent—and the child minder in question would absently wave off the inquiry or simply ignore it.
• Culture January 1, 1
• Culture January 1, 1
• Culture January 1, 1
• Culture January 1, 1
• Culture January 1, 1
• Culture January 1, 1
• Culture January 1, 1
• Culture January 1, 1