Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
March 4, 2010 · 4 Comments
<I>The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers</I>

For my tenth birthday, my mother got me a framed copy of the front page of the New York Times from the day I was born. The big headline is about food costs pushing up …

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
March 4, 2010 · 22 Comments

I actually enjoyed it, because I expected to hate it, and while it is definitely bad — buys into its own pompous mythos, takes too long to explain a conflict nobody cares about, thinks it’s …

The Vine: Ask The Readers Book-a-thon #10
March 3, 2010 · 6 Comments

Hi Sarah,
Seeing so many reader entries about children’s books has gotten me nostalgic for the books of my childhood. I remember a lot of them, but there were two I loved but cannot remember the …

The Vine: Ask The Readers Book-a-thon #9
March 3, 2010 · 13 Comments

Hello!
So, I am beginning to think I might be crazy, because I am looking for a book I loved but I am having no luck at all.
I read it in the 1970s; it was about …

The Vine: Ask The Readers Book-a-thon #8
March 3, 2010 · 3 Comments

Sars —
I’m hoping the readers can help me out with my search for a beloved childhood read.   It was a YA novel about a teenage girl in post-Revolutionary America (I think Jefferson was president …

The Vine: Ask The Readers Book-a-thon #7
March 3, 2010 · 10 Comments

I’m looking for a book I read in the mid-to-late 1980s.   It was a young adult book and involved a teen boy who has an amulet that causes a portal to another world to …

The Vine: Ask The Readers Book-a-thon #6
March 3, 2010 · 16 Comments

In middle school, instead of an elective, I was a Library Aide.   I was a super goob, but I got to read a lot of really good books — I stumbled across du Maurier …

The Vine: Ask The Readers Book-a-thon #5
March 3, 2010 · 14 Comments

Dear Sars,
A longtime lurker peeking out into the light.
No amount of Googling has helped me turn up an old favorite from my Catholic school days, so I’m giving it a shot here. There was a …

The Vine: Ask The Readers Book-a-thon #4
March 3, 2010 · 6 Comments

Dear Sars,
I’m hoping readers can point me toward a poem. In a college Asian history class, our professor showed us a Chinese poem. It was a nice but fairly standard poem, had been submitted anonymously …

The Vine: Ask The Readers Book-a-thon #3
March 3, 2010 · 4 Comments

Hi, Sars —
I’m looking for a short story, narrated by a guy who I think has a connection with the federal government (i.e., he’s a BIA rep or something like that) who’s been sent to …