The best of Brain Pickings 2018, in one place

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. View it in full.   If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, subscribe here — it's free.   Need to modify your subscription? You can change your email address or unsubscribe. Hello, tech! This is a special annual edition of the Brain Pickings newsletter by Maria Popova. The regular Sunday edition will be with you predictably and reliably this weekend. In case you missed them, here are my annual selections of the year's loveliest children's books and overall favorite books. And if you find any value and joy in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation – this year, like every year for the past twelve, I have invested innumerable hours and tremendous resources in Brain Pickings, and every little bit of support helps keep it going. If you already donate: THANK YOU. The Best of Brain Pickings 2018 In this annual review, as usual, "best" is a composite measure of what I most enjoyed thinking and writing about, and what readers most enjoyed reading and sharing. Here is to the intellectual and spiritual electricity of the eclectic, and to a beautiful new orbit. The Difficult Art of Giving Space in Love: Rilke on Freedom, Togetherness, and the Secret to a Good Marriage Read Article/ A Brave and Startling Truth: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads Maya Angelou's Stunning Humanist Poem That Flew to Space, Inspired by Carl Sagan Read/hear the poem/ Life, Loss, and the Wisdom of Rivers Read Article/ Figuring Read Article/ Two Hundred Years of Blue Read Article/ Singularity: Poet Marie Howe's Beautiful Tribute to Stephen Hawking and Our Belonging to the Universe Read Article/ A Gentle Corrective for the Epidemic of Identity Politics Turning Us on Each Other and on Ourselves Read Article/ A Velocity of Being: Illustrated Letters to Children about Why We Read by 121 of the Most Inspiring Humans in Our World Read Article/ How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life Read Article/ Kahlil Gibran on the Courage to Weather the Uncertainties of Love Read Article/ Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair Read Article/ Nietzsche on Truth, Lies, the Power and Peril of Metaphor, and How We Use Language to Reveal and Conceal Reality Read Article/ Elizabeth Gilbert on Love, Loss, and How to Move Through Grief as Grief Moves Through You Read Article/ Against the Illusion of Separateness: Pablo Neruda's Beautiful and Humanistic Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Read Article/ Emily Dickinson's Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert Read Article/ Walt Whitman on Democracy and Optimism as a Mighty Form of Resistance Read Article/ Iris Murdoch on Storytelling, Why Art Is Essential for Democracy, and the Key to Good Writing Read Article/ Create Dangerously: Albert Camus on the Artist as a Voice of Resistance and a Liberator of Society Read Article/ The Hour of Land: Terry Tempest Williams on the Responsibility of Awe and the Wilderness as an Antidote to the War Within Ourselves Read Article/ Carl Sagan on Mystery, Why Common Sense Blinds Us to the Universe, and How to Live with the Unknown Read Article/ Bear and Wolf: A Tender Illustrated Fable of Walking Side by Side in Otherness Read Article/ Literary Witches: An Illustrated Celebration of Trailblazing Women Writers Who Have Enchanted and Transformed the World Read Article/ Ursula K. Le Guin on Art, Storytelling, and the Power of Language to Transform and Redeem Read Article/ From Euclid to Equality: Mathematician Lillian Lieber on How the Greatest Creative Revolution in Mathematics Illuminates the Core Ideals of Social Justice and Democracy Read Article/ Nobel-Winning Physicist Niels Bohr on Subjective vs. Objective Reality and the Uses of Religion in a Secular World Read Article/ Georgia O'Keeffe on the Art of Seeing Read Article/ Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads Ursula K. Le Guin's "Hymn to Time" hear the poem/ Forward to a friend/Read Newsletter Online/ donating=loving In 2018, the twelfth year of Brain Pickings, I poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into this labor of love, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and consolation here this year, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.   one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount.   You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out on Sundays and offers the week's most unmissable articles. Brain Pickings PLEASE DO NOT USE AS A MAILING ADDRESS 47 Bergen Street, 3rd floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list   update subscription preferences