The Redemption of Saint Anthony
By Colin Dickey In the fall of 1849, Gustave Flaubert invited his two closest friends—Louis Bouilhet and Maxime du Camp—to hear a reading of what…
By Colin Dickey In the fall of 1849, Gustave Flaubert invited his two closest friends—Louis Bouilhet and Maxime du Camp—to hear a reading of what…
By Marion Meade Hollywood has served as a novelist’s muse for almost a century. The list of writers who found inspiration there includes the likes…
By Robert C. Davis In 1817, the American sea captain, James Riley, published An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig “Commerce,” Wrecked…
By Dr. Raphael Calel The United States has in recent years become a stronghold for climate change skepticism, especially since the country’s declaration in 2001…
By Leon Botstein Marking anniversaries of the birth and death of historic figures, particularly in music, is somewhat akin to commemorating annually the date of…
By Frank Delaney Her appeal is so powerful that museums hold her in permanent exhibition—and some of them even commemorate her solely. Hollywood has trawled…
By Niki Russell In September 1726, news reached the court of King George I of the alleged birth of several rabbits to Mary Toft (1703-1763)…
By Christopher S. Celenza “Comedian,” admittedly, is not the first word you associate with Machiavelli—and “funny” is not a word normally applied to Lucretius. And…
By Ian Stewart Edwin Abbott Abbott, who became Headmaster of the City of London School at the early age of 26, was renowned as a…
By Brook Wilensky-Lanford The quest to find the Garden of Eden sounds like an occupation that should have fallen by the wayside well before the…
Hillary Rodham Clinton might become the first female President of the United States of America—formerly being the First Lady, a senator, and the Secretary of…
By Christopher Klein A dense ocean of humanity lapped up to the doorstep of John L. Sullivan’s gilded liquor palace. Heads craned and tilted as…
Geronimo (1829-1909), whose given name was Goyahkla, sometimes spelled Goyathlay, is one of the most famous figures in the history of the American Indian resistance…
How old are the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence? Many might trace their origins to the mid-twentieth century, and the work of people such…
While still at school, Stefan Zweig had tried his hand at translating a number of French and Belgian poets, Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Baudelaire, but also…
When Charles L. Dodgson was born in January 1832, his paternal aunt wrote a letter to his parents, welcoming the “dear little stranger” and begging…
Far from the fantastic and improbable tale that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein now seems to us, the novel was declared by one reviewer upon publication to…
At the beginning of 1797, John Robison was a man with a solid and long-established reputation in the British scientific establishment. He had been Professor…
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes saga has enjoyed—or in some cases, suffered—countless reinventions since its original publication from 1887 to 1927. The BBC’s current television version…
If you watch science-fiction films produced in the 1970s or 1980s, you will most likely decide that that were naive and somewhat absurd in their…