Thin Ice

James Geary is the author of, among other books, a new, expanded edition of the New York Times bestseller The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism (University of Chicago, forthcoming 2025), Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It (W. W. Norton, 2018), and I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World (HarperCollins, 2011). His poems, aphorisms, and essays have appeared in Citron Review, Hotel Amerika, AGNI, Pangyrus, PN Review, and elsewhere. He is an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. (updated 10/2025)