The Marginalian
The Light Between Us
Love After Love: Derek Walcott’s Poetic Ode to Relearning to Be at Home in Ourselves After Heartbreak
The Importance of Being Scared: Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on Fairy Tales and the Necessity of Fear
Richard Dawkins on the Luckiness of Death
When Einstein Met Tagore: A Remarkable Meeting of Minds on the Edge of Science and Spirituality
Immortality in Passing: Poet Lisel Mueller, Who Lived to 96, on What Gives Meaning to Our Ephemeral Lives
What It’s Like to Touch the Bottom of the World
Do Not Spare Yourself
Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World
Trial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible: The Remarkable Story Behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”
Is There a God? Stephen Hawking Gives the Definitive Answer to the Eternal Question
Cephalopod Atlas: Stunning, Sensual Illustrations from the World’s First Encyclopedia of Octopus and Squid Wonders from the Ocean Depths
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
How to Bear Your Fear and What It Means to Love: A Tender Meditation in Ink, Watercolor, and Wonder
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty
Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss
The Purest Definition of Love, the Qualities of a Lasting Relationship, and the Salve for the Betrayals of Time
Diseases of the Will: Neuroscience Founding Father Santiago Ramón y Cajal on the Six Psychological Flaws That Keep the Gifted from Living Up to Their Gift
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss
Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity
Kafka’s Remarkable Letter to His Abusive and Narcissistic Father
Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert
A Spell Against Fear: Tracy K. Smith on Poetry and The Art of Productive Impatience
The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother
The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother
How to Stop Waiting and Start Living: A Jolt from Henry James
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
Let the Last Thing Be Song
How to Be an Instrument of Kindness in a Harsh World: George Saunders on Unthinking the Mind, Unstorying the Self, and the 3 Antidotes to Your Suffering
Elif Shafak on the Three Roots of Hate and How to Be a Star Student of Life
Emerson on How to Touch the Universe
How Not to Be a Victim of Time: Rebecca West on Music and Life
How to Be Immense: Trauma Therapist Frances Weller on the Relationship Between Uncertainty and Renewal
Strata: The Consolations and Invitations of Deep Time
How to Hold on to the Light of the World
The Trouble with Romantic Love
Saved by Wonder: The Ziegler Polar Expedition and the Aurora Borealis
Traversal: New Year, New Book (Seven Years in the Making)
Cover Song for the Second Law: A Poem for Beginnings
The Body as Revolution: Che Guevara on Social Medicine and Personal Health as a Political Act
Love, Lichen, and the Art of Trusting Time: The Best of The Marginalian 2025
The Continuous Creative Act of Holding on While Letting Go: 10 Cultural Icons on the Art of Growing Older
How to Bioluminesce: Artist Ash Eliza Williams’s Reveries of Wonder
When Friends Become Lovers: H.G. Wells on Navigating Blurring Boundaries
How to Live Fully: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Remedy for Our Resistance to Change
If Birds Ran the World
The Leaf that Wouldn’t Fall: A Tender Illustrated Parable about the Measure and Meaning of Love
The Woman Who Mapped Labrador and Revolutionized the Literature of Exploration
A Decalogue for the Dignity of Growing Old: Eva Perón’s Revolutionary Rights of the Elderly
Favorite Books of 2025
Beatitude: Poet John Keene’s Spell Against Despair
The Lighthouse Keeper: A Tender Illustrated Meditation on What Saves Us
Little Free Library Divinations: Searching for the Meaning of Life in Discarded Books and Found Objects
The Indissoluble Filament Connecting Us All: Patti Smith on What It Means to Be an Artist
Aldo Leopold on How to Hear the Song of Life
Alphabet in Motion: Artist Kelli Anderson’s Wondrous Pop-up Biography of the Letters
How to Be Human: Kahlil Gibran’s Recipe for Our Spiritual Perfection as a Species
Thanks: W.S. Merwin’s Ode to the Defiant Courage of Gratitude in a Broken World
Love Against Probability
A Lamentation for Linnaeus: In Praise of Confusion and Rewilding Wonder
If You Forget Me: Pablo Neruda’s Staggering (Un)breakup Poem
Chasing Fog: The Science and Spirituality of Nature’s Grounded Cloud
How to Love the World More: Artist and Poet Rachel Hébert’s Breathtaking Catalogue of Gratitudes
Midnight Motorbike: A Lullaby of Wonder for the Sleepless, Inspired by the Whimsy of South India
How to Fix Breakdowns in Communication
Against the Cartesian Myth of Work/Life Balance: André Gregory’s Extraordinary Letter to Richard Avedon about the Nature of Creativity
Words: Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Language
How to Be a Lichen: Adaptive Strategies for the Vulnerabilities of Being Human from Nature’s Tiny Titans of Tenacity
How Not to Waste Your Life
The Beginning and the End of War, in a Stunning Watercolor Reckoning with Humanity
What It’s Like to Meet an Orca
Endless forms of Wonder: The Nautilus, the Leopard, and the Spirituality of Wildness
The Search for Meaning Cast in Clay: 19 Years of The Marginalian in 19 Ceramic Sentences
A Chosen Path of Light: Alain de Botton on Successful Friendships
Perfect Mind: The Gnostic Field Guide to Wholeness and Hearing the Voice of Truth
The Engine of Our Redemption: Nick Cave on How to Use Your Suffering
I Feel, Therefore I Understand: Humboldt on the Essence of Science and How to Read the Poetry of Nature
Annie Dillard on How to Live
How to Be a Good Explorer in the Lifelong Expedition to Yourself
How to See the Milky Way: Instructions for Being More Alive
How Not to Be a Victim of Success
The Three Elements of the Good Life
Heed Your Daemon: Rudyard Kipling on Writing
Eight Takes: How to Tell a Truer Love Story
The Measure of a True Visionary: Jane Goodall on the Indivisibility of Art and Science
The Feather Detective: How Roxie Laybourne Pioneered Forensic Ornithology
The Cell vs. the Crystal: The Philosopher-Naturalist John Burroughs on What Makes a Great Poem and a Great Person
Fernando Pessoa on Unselfing into Who You Really Are
How Humanity Saved the Ginkgo
Ode to a Good Pen: Or, How to Write the Book of Love
The Heart of the Andes and the Invention of Virtual Reality: Frederic Edwin Church’s Immersive 19th-century Paintings of Natural Wonders
The Coziest Place on the Moon: An Illustrated Fable about How to Live with Loneliness and What It Means to Love, Inspired by a Real NASA Discovery
Arundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of Success
Virginia Woolf on Love
By Contacts We Are Saved: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Change, the Meaning of Faith, and the Courage of Heresy
On Looking: Poet Lia Purpura on the Art of Noticing
Embodiment and the (Re)invention of Emoji, from the Aztecs to Humboldt and Darwin to AI
A Heron, a Red Leaf, and a Hole in a Blue Star: Poet Jane Kenyon on the Art of Letting Go
Undersound: The Secret Lives of Ponds and the Mysterious Musicality of the World
Decoding the Mystery of Intuition: Pioneering Philosopher of AI Margaret Boden on the Three Elements of Creativity
Orcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful and Creative Predator
Rewilding the Human Spirit in the Age of Moral Colonialism: Brian Eno on Carnival as a Model for Saving Culture
Dawn: A Watercolor Ode to the Primeval Conversation Between Our Living Planet and Its Dying Star