Follow @yaleRELIbooks As 2013 draws to a close, we reflect on the superlatives of the past year. Everyone is busy writing up their own “Best of 2013” lists and “Year in Review” articles. Amidst all of the reflection on our high points, we cannot escape recollections of our lows. In
Follow @yaleRELIbooks This holiday season, giving is frequently on our minds. Gary Anderson’s Charity is a welcome reminder that not all giving is inspired by a commercial materialism. Different motivations for charity mean different ways of giving, as Anderson explains. Bill and Melinda Gates have given an immense amount money and their
Who owns a book? Does it belong solely to the person who bought that copy, or to the author? And how does the publisher come into the picture? In this excerpt from A Little History of Literature, John Sutherland explains the various people and processes involved in the production of
Follow @yaleRELIbooks With the holiday season in full-swing, Christmas carols are playing every where you go. These hymns are part of a much larger tradition of devotional poetry extensively laid out in Before the Door of God, an anthology edited by Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson. We spoke with Hopler and
In continuing the centennial celebration of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, it is sometimes difficult to remember that this work was not always considered worthy of such fanfare. When Proust first attempted to find a publisher for his first volume of In Search of Lost Time, he was met with rejection
Follow @yaleARTbooks Currently on view at The Phillips Collection is Van Gogh Repetitions, an exhibition examining Vincent van Gogh’s artistic process. The exhibition focuses on van Gogh’s repeated rendering of particular images, and examines many questions about van Gogh’s unique artistic process: what was the speed with which he painted
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. – Søren Kierkegaard We constantly seek to delay the inconveniences of mortality for as long as humanly possible, as can be seen in the launch of Google’s startup Calico as well as the deluge of anti-aging products and
John Sutherland’s A Little History of Literature tackles a very big subject: the glorious span of literature from Greek myth to graphic novels, from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Harry Potter. In this excerpt from the book, Sutherland addresses a fundamental question: what exactly is literature? Most of us encounter
Follow @yaleARTbooks Anna Vallye— The exciting thing about any art exhibition is certainly the opportunity it provides to see a number of remarkable works in the same location at the same time—its event quality. But it is also in what might be called an exhibition’s phenomenal quality—a capacity to elicit