Humanities

Spotlight on the O’Neill: 50 Years of American Theater, An Interactive Timeline

“At the O’Neill, we were all engaged with full-hearted passion in sometimes the silliest of exercises, and all in service of finding that wiggly, elusive creature, a new play.”—Meryl Streep The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center is celebrating its 50th anniversary with  an exhibit by the New York Public Library and The O’Neill:

Continue reading…

A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide (Author Interview Video)

Follow @yaleRELIbooks On the night of November 9, 1938, now known as Kristallnacht, the Nazis burned the Hebrew Bible everywhere in Germany. In the video below, Alon Confino explains why this act, among the other horrors committed that night, was particularly unusual. There is not a direct connection between the Nazi’s racist ideology

Continue reading…

Roman Architecture: An Interactive Guide and Vacation Planner

As the days grow warmer and the nights grow longer, some are on vacation and many more are wishing they were. The best trips provide opportunities to see new sights, learn about another culture, and return home enriched by the experience. All too often, though, travelers witness the attractions that

Continue reading…

Playing Mary Tyrone: Preview Jessica Lange’s Foreword to Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Eugene O’Neill‘s autobiographical masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night won both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It is a harrowing depiction of one day in the life of the Tyrone family. The drama focuses on James, an aging actor, Mary, his morphine-addicted wife, Edmund and

Continue reading…

Thoreau: Fully Annotated

In a month, it will have been ten years since Jeffrey S. Cramer published Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition. Cramer has had a prolific and successful decade, editing numerous volumes on Henry David Thoreau and racking up awards and praise. In 2012, radio host Jim Fleming said that Cramer “may know

Continue reading…

The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll in 10 Songs: A Conversation with Greil Marcus

Follow  The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll in Ten Songs on Facebook! In anticipation of the Saturday, May 31 broadcast of the 2014 Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame inductees, we are excited to announce cultural critic and Rolling Stone columnist Greil Marcus’ new book, The History of Rock ‘N’

Continue reading…

Jewish American Heritage Month Features The Glatstein Chronicles

Get the ebook of The Glatstein Chronicles for only 2.99 via Open Road Media this Jewish American Heritage Month!   In 1934 and with World War II steadily nearing, Jacob Glatstein, one of the most prominent Yiddish-language poets of his time, boarded a ship from the United States to visit his dying

Continue reading…

Wilfred Owen: WWI’s Peter Pan Poet

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. — from “Dulce et Decorum Est” (1917) As a fourteen-year-old boy, Wilfred Owen wore a crest that combined a globe with a cross, and

Continue reading…

Yale Press Podcast: Author Jennifer Michael Hecht on Suicide

Follow @freudeinstein (Jennifer Michael Hecht) There is a certain myth to the idea that most suicides occur around the holidays; in fact, it’s usually in spring and summer that see the highest rates of this irretrievable act. In our latest episode of the Yale Press Podcast, Jennifer Michael Hecht, author

Continue reading…

The Ten Commandments in Modern Context

Follow @yaleRELIbooks Read Michael Coogan’s post on the politics of the April 27 canonization of John XXIII and John Paul II Despite the Ten Commandments’ enduring power as either the purported word of God or a document of great historical significance, few would support following a literal interpretation of them

Continue reading…