Civil rights leaders of the 1960s and ‘70s did not regard Richard Nixon highly for his support of the movement; yet the president’s promotion of affirmative action and funding for minority-owned businesses and historically black... Read More

Roses are one of the oldest plants known to man. They appear in Shakespeare’s plays, as in this passage, from Antony and Cleopatra: “He wears the rose of youth upon him.” It is written that Persian poets and Mogul emperors lured... Read More

At a Victorian dinner party, woe betide the fool who used his pickle fork to eat his duck—or his strawberry fork to eat asparagus. By the time that era’s famous fussiness made its way to the table, any given meal might require as... Read More

“Only to a few, and they are very few, does an extraordinary life come; all the others must be satisfied with what they have.” Luisa, an aging accountant for a toy firm in Italy where she lives, deems herself satisfied with her... Read More

“Della Raye’s only possession was the ragged, filthy dress she wore—made from a discarded feed sack. Hunger had stalked every day of her short life. She had never tasted ice cream, never petted a puppy, never played with a doll.”... Read More

It is 1945 and WWII has just ended. Sixteen-year-old Dulcie Stoneworth and her twelve-year-old brother Jackie are travelling by train from their coal-mining hometown in Kentucky to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with their cousins in... Read More

The bliss of early infatuation can compel even skeptics to feel as if they had known their lover in a former life. How better to explain an overpowering passion than to conclude that it spans centuries? Past lives, however, may be more... Read More

Following catastrophic events, it is natural for people to claim the world has changed. So it has been following the events of September 11th. And yet, when reading the Daodejing one understands that such claims are simply one way that... Read More