Coco Chanel may not have invented elegance, or taste, or fashion, but the iconic designer was an absolute embodiment of these ideas. From department stores to sunglasses, billboard advertisements to suits to alluring, evocative fragrances, we are offered frequent, dazzling reminders of the timeless aesthetic vision of Chanel. Jérôme Gautier,
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but if David Margolick’s new book Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock is any indication, a thousand is a low estimate. While the book itself only runs 320 pages, since its September release date, many pages more have been
On November 17, 1558, Queen Mary I of England died in the midst of her restoration of Catholicism. The glorious reign of her succeeding half-sister Elizabeth and the permanent installation of Protestantism as the religion of the Church of England has left this first reigning English queen with a certain
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Growing up, many of us were taught that our left brain was the source of reason and logic, while our right brain ruled over imagination and creativity. However, according to prominent psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, this is not the whole truth. In a video recently posted on the website
Julie Flavell, author of When London Was Capital of America and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, takes you on a unique walk of Georgian London in the days when southern American visitors were bringing a mixed race look to the neighborhood. “What Dr Johnson Knew” Julie Flavell— “How is
Born November 15, 1887, Georgia O’Keeffe lived 98 years to become one of the most well known and celebrated American artists of the twentieth century. But to her husband Alfred Stieglitz, the man who had first brought her work to New York, she was “Sweetestheart”, and he was “Dearest Duck.”
Michal Raz-Russo, Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and editor of the new book The Three Graces, has offered us a behind-the-scenes look at some of the detective work that went into this ambitious project, which investigates the cultural influences that shaped women’s
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Sharon McGrayne’s The Theory That Would Not Die is the story about a statistical method of analysis that almost wasn’t. Created by the Reverend Thomas Bayes and further molded by scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace, Bayes’ theorem is a statistical analysis method for probability that takes an initial guess or
Follow @yaleSCIbooks A self-published book encourages parents to employ corporal punishment to tragic effect, the New York Times reported Monday. The book, To Train Up a Child, is the work of Tennessee preacher Michael Pearl and his wife Debi, and includes recommendations on how to use “the rod” to make
In Why Trilling Matters, from Yale University Press’s Why X Matters Series, Adam Kirsch makes a compelling argument for why mid-century American literary critic Lionel Trilling might matter thirty-six years after his death. Yet the importance of a literary critic rests on the more fundamental question of the importance of