Annals of Intrigue THE PALIO by Lis Harris. ANNALS OF INTRIGUE about Siena's Palio, a bareback horse race that has existed in its present form for more than 300 years & has its roots in the city's ancient past. The Palio is run twice every summer--once in July & once in August in the Piazzo del Campo...

The Talk of the Town No Clocks by Richard Brookhiser. Talk Story about the Old Merchants House located on East Fourth Street. In 1835 the house was bought by Seabury Tredwell & the last Tredwell to own the house was his daughter Gertrude who died in 1933. George Chapman, a distant relative of Gertrude's, who visited the house for the...

Comment by Suzannah Lessard. Comment about the writer's uncle, a Second World War veteran who died recently. At his funeral the writer is struck by how the thought of his life, & not death, was frightening. He barely had any biography at all, because biography arises from interaction with other people, & he was...

The Talk of the Town Another World by Philip Hamburger. Talk story about taking a train to Boston. Writer had no special reason for going and was in no special hurry. He treated himself to a seat in the club car (eats come with the ticket), and it was sleek, comfortable, and welcoming with soft red seats and large picture...

A Reporter at Large CROSSING THE STRAITS by Milton Viorst. REPORTER AT LARGE about Turkey. Today Istanbul is a provincial capital in a workaday republic. After two millennia as an international metropolis, it is now a Turkish city, increasingly overpopulated and industrialized. The tremendous effort that the Turks have been expending to make Istanbul into a modern city can be...

Books by Anna Shapiro.

Fiction One of the Great Seductresses of Irish History by Ethna Carroll. Emer's parents are away. Her father left for the Aran Islands, where he's going to spend a few months doing research on the Irish language & her mother is accompanying him for a few days. Emer, 17, is almost free, but not entirely, because Peggy, her mother's sister, is staying...

Letter from Beijing by Fred C. Shapiro. This letter is datelined May 26 & is about the student demonstrations. What has happened in China, mostly in Beijing in the past several weeks is unlike anything writer has seen before. From Tiananmen Square "People Power" has radiated out to control almost every city intersection, & at last report...

The Talk of the Town Air by Mindy Aloff. Talk story aboutMieczyslaw Litwinski, a young composer, who recently performed at the American Museum of Natural History, where he took part in a wandering vaudeville show produced by the Brooklyn organization Dancing in the Streets. Litwinski was born in Poland, became a musician, & performed his own compositions in Europe...

Fiction The Right Thing by Stephen Stark. Jack is mad at his father for taking a countertop job for Jim Harley, a drunk. It's just like his father's notion of a man's humility to take a job from someone he knows is never going to pay him. Driving over to Harley's trailer, they hardly speak & Jack...

Poetry Shirt by Robert Pinsky. The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams...

Poetry A Wall in the Woods: Cummington by Richard Wilbur. What is it for, now that dividing neither...