Adam Gopnik compares and contrasts living in Paris in the latter half of the twentieth century while he and his his wife raised their family

The children's gate is an entrance to Central Park that leads to the playground. Gopnik explores that entrance in metaphor and experience as he recounts his family's return from Paris to New Yorka seemingly secure, almost oddly child-friendly New Yorkin the fall of 2000. Gopnik describes not a city but an extended urban family, and a home charmed by the civilization of childhood. It's a charm that is simultaneously protect from, challenged by, and...

"From the earliest years of the American republic, Paris has provoked an extraordinary American literary response. An almost inevitable destination for writers and thinkers, Paris has been many things to many Americans: a bastion of old-world traditionalism, a hot-bed of revolutionary ideologies in politics and art, and above all a space in which to cultivate an openness to life and love impossible at home. Through stories, letters, memoirs, poems...

In The Peanuts Papers, thirty-three writers and artists reflect on the deeper truths of Schulzs deceptively simple comic, its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture. These enchanting, affecting, and often quite personal essays show just how much Peanuts means to its many admirersand the ways it invites us to ponder, in the words of Sarah Boxer, zhow to survive and still be a decent human beingy in an often bewildering world. Featuring...