Graham Seal— Ancient though their origins may be, the world’s many myths and legends have played an important role in history. Frightening fables of unknown southern lands, tales of lost cities, and endless rumors of hidden hordes of gold have motivated many of the world’s greatest explorations. Five centuries before
Gabriel Josipovici— Hamlet is the best-known work of literature in the English (and perhaps any) language, but it is also one of the most puzzling. We all feel we know it intimately, yet when we try to put that knowledge into words we find we hardly know it at all.
Rebecca Lemov— A little-known turning point in the prosecution of World War II war crimes occurred in 1945 at Nuremberg. Sitting on his prison cot was Hermann Göring, recently captured Reichsfeldmarschall, founder of the Sturmabteilung (SA), creator of the first concentration camps, and a man who, not many weeks before,
Geoff Wisner— After graduating from Harvard College in 1837, Henry David Thoreau returned to the village of Concord, where he taught school with his older brother John. At least once a week the Thoreau brothers took the students out for a walk or a boating excursion. On one of these
Marion L. Soards— In the course of a conversation about religion, it would not be surprising to hear someone refer to the New Testament, meaning by that phrase to name the portion of the Christian Bible that is regarded as sacred Scripture by many people and that was written originally
Markus Rathey— We listen to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passions in strange isolation. Originally composed for the Lutheran liturgy in Leipzig, Germany, these magnificent pieces were embedded into a liturgical framework, which created its own references and its own meaning. During the season of Lent (forty-four days before Good Friday), concerted
Stephen H. Blackwell and Kurt Johnson— Nabokov’s science and art are united most of all by his fascination with time, and it was that fascination that led to one of his most surprising near-discoveries in the 1940s. His work with time as a biological factor in evolution produced major scientific
John Makeham— Forty years ago, intellectual historian Joseph Levenson famously commented: “What the West has probably done to China is to change the latter’s language—what China has done to the West is to enlarge the latter’s vocabulary.” Levenson was referring to a process that began in the decades immediately before
C. Kavin Rowe— One of the greatest mysteries of human life is that we are a problem for ourselves. We tend to act in ways that damage our lives and mess things up. We let our passions run amok, focus on things that don’t matter much rather than on the
Scott Timberg— When you ask people why they steal music, or why they don’t care about the collapse of the record industry, the more informed ones talk about the decadence of the labels themselves. Lowery, who teaches a course on the economics of music at the University of Georgia’s business school,