Susan Tomes— A history of the piano in only 100 pieces—how can that be? Doesn’t the piano have one of the most extensive literatures of music written for any instrument? In reality, one would need thousands of choices to do justice to the piano music of the last 250 years.
Joel E. Dimsdale— When I tell people I am interested in brainwashing, I get mixed responses. “Isn’t that kind of a stale, musty topic—Communists, bad science, and all that stuff?” That’s fair: brainwashing has some of those characteristics. It is an old phenomenon, linked to religious conversion and torture. It
Bentley Layton— The Gospel according to Thomas (“The Gospel of Thomas”) is an anthology of 114 “obscure sayings” of Jesus, which, according to its prologue, were collected and transmitted by St. Didymus Jude Thomas. The sayings do not appear within a biographical narrative about Jesus, although some of them individually
Kevin Madigan— Around 1870, evangelical Christians, as their Catholic adversaries would put it, “invaded” Italy in large numbers. Before unification and the inception of a new liberal order, the extension of rights of toleration to Jews and non-Catholic Christians, and the dispossession of the papal states, Protestant missionaries, by and
Considered a modern classic, this New York Times bestseller by the award-winning journalist Ahmed Rashid provides an early glimpse into the history of the Taliban. Ahmed Rashid— The links between the Taliban and some of the extreme Pakistani Deobandi groups are solid because of the common ground they share. Several
Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden— In January 1830, a year after David Walker published his Appeal, fifty-one-year-old George M. Erskine of Tennessee set sail for the newly settled colony of Liberia. With him aboard the brig Liberia were his wife Hagar, fifty; seven of their eight children—Jane, thirty; Wallace, twenty-one; Mary, seventeen; Weir,
Laura Muir— The story of how an unusual coffee and tea service made its way from Weimar, Germany, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, is both remarkable and emblematic of the way in which Harvard University’s extensive Bauhaus collection came into being. Founded in 1919 by German architect Walter Gropius and closed just
Early this summer, we proudly released Duo Duo’s new collection of poems, Words as Grain. Lucas Klein, editor and translator of the career-spanning anthology, notes in his introduction that the poet’s early work has often been seen as an expression of the era, yet his poetry “has never been reducible
Shaila Seshia Galvin— These days, the word organic typically conjures notions of food that is natural, pure, and ecologically produced. Recent decades have seen the rapid expansion of organic agriculture, with the amount of land area under certification, the number of producers, and the volume of sales all witnessing rapid
Joseph Turow— Public attention to the voice industry has centered primarily on smart speakers. Dubbed “voice first” devices by marketers, these are cylinders (or more recently other shapes) that sometimes come with screens. Ask a question or make a request, and the devices can access a huge number of information