The Browser - Friends of Cecily

Horace considered the giraffe an aesthetic monstrosity — an ill-resolved hybrid of leopard and camel. Gibbon mocked the giraffe as "the most useless of quadrupeds". Darwin thought the giraffe's glorious neck to be merely functional, the outcome of a "competition among browsers" to reach high-hanging fruit— browsers being, in those days, animals which reached up to eat, as distinct from grazers, which reached down.

Our own giraffe, Cecily, is well acquainted with her species' long history of mockery and misrepresentation, and happy to find herself in a place where she is respected and admired. As mascot of The Browser she presides over what is probably the only publication ever to be named after an animal's eating habits.

Cecily is happy — but she is also a touch lonely. She wants to see more of her friends. She wants to get to know her friends better. She has read her anthropology, so she knows that friendships grow stronger with the giving of gifts. Cecily has prepared a neck-stretching array of gifts for her friends.

Friends Of Cecily will receive:

•   book recommendations specially for you from the Browser team
•   surprise themed goodies direct from Cecily
•   invitations to talk with our editors and guests on Zoom and in person
•   a voucher for gifting a one-year Browser subscription to a like-minded friend
•   our boundless gratitude, human and giraffine, now and forever

Irresistible, isn't it? You can become a Friend Of Cecily for $150 per year here, which includes your own subscription to the Browser.

Per contra, If you share Horace's view of giraffes, and would prefer to keep Cecily at a distance, please consider a regular Browser subscription, which costs $5 per month or $48 per year.

In either case your subscription will bring you the world's most admired and quietly influential general-interest email newsletter every day, recommending fine writing and thought-provoking ideas of lasting value. Our summaries are marvels of compression, capturing the essence of an idea or an argument in two or three sentences. If you do have time to go deeper, each of the five pieces that we summarise each day will richly reward reading in full.

We thank you for your support. We hope for your continuing support in the future. Cecily hopes to welcome you as a Friend.

Cecily, Robert, Caroline and I all wish you a rewarding and, where possible, relaxing holiday season. We do not know what the New Year will bring; we do know that The Browser will surprise and delight you with things that you want to know, and things that you never thought possible.

Uri Bram
Publisher of the Browser