When I come home from the library with a stack of novels, I often decide which one to start by reading the first pages. I’m looking to be intrigued, to find a character or a tone that makes me want to ...

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: I have a Ph.D. in English, more specifically, in rhetoric and composition. My decades of academic life have been occupied by the study and teaching of ...

Rivers are not fixed in place but rather tend to shift across the landscape. As they travel, they sow the seeds for diverse and productive ecosystems—forests, wetlands and floodplains—to emerge and ...