Italia. Marvel of Mediterranean marvels. Bootcrafty spellcaster of bewitchment. One visit is never enough, not for the Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, nor the Aragonese, all of whom set foot on Italy’s islands... Read More

A skilled historian answers key questions about military strategy during the “war to end all wars.” Peter Hart, Oral Historian of the Imperial War Museum in London, lays out his thesis in the first sentence of The Great War: A Combat... Read More

In the years between 1918 and 1920, influenza swept across the globe, killing at least fifty million people, with more than half a million of them in the United States. What’s particularly striking about the epidemic is the way that it... Read More

“Was there any?” was the response of a film historian when Tom Stempel, a professor of cinema, mentioned that he was researching writing in American television. Film and television screenplays usually do not appear on lists of great... Read More

“Little by little, the spirit gets broken here,” says Caro Spencer in May Sarton’s novel As We Are Now, describing her life in Twin Elms. Sarton based the nursing home she’s speaking of on a “disgraceful” facility she visited... Read More

Topping the charts in 1762 was the hit Artaxerxes, sung all-in-English by Giusto Tenducci. With a three-octave range, Tenducci was a virtuoso. He also was a castrato. Apparently his loss was the Baroque era’s gain. The most brilliant... Read More

“Nuns defy stereotypes,” says Carole Garibaldi Rogers, whose compelling collection of interviews with ninety-six women religious highlights the dramatic changes that they have had to confront during the past fifty years. Habits of... Read More

The name unfailingly evokes heroic adventure, dazzling conquests, exotic realms, a tragic early death … but quite what happened after the conqueror’s demise in Babylon, in 323, at age 32, poses a major mystery. In a clear narrative,... Read More