Current bestsellers on Iraqi history reveal a nation steeped in religious frenzy, poverty, and war. The fact that few, if any, Western readers can conceive of a Baghdad beyond... Read More

“The great myth of war is that it can be left behind,” Catherine Whitney observes in this stirring, yet sadly familiar story about her brother, Jim Schuler. Retired Staff... Read More

Its the tritest of academic cliches, of course: the professor/student affair. While Rackstraw only suggests that she and Vonnegut may have been intimate, she leaves absolutely... Read More

Don’t judge a movement by its earliest adepts, advised Friedrich Nietzsche. He might have been talking about psychoanalysis, except that he died in 1900, the year that Sigmund... Read More

“I gave the world a shadow of me,” writes the author, “a me who looked like me but wasn’t. I reserved the real Esmeralda in a quiet, secret place no one could reach. I... Read More

Sir Gregor MacGregor (1786?1845), con man extraordinaire, was known for his “intemperate and unusual enjoyments.” Denied these, he might have made his name as a military... Read More