Follow @yaleARTbooks The Art Institute of Chicago has a boisterous, expansive holiday spirit. The annual wreath-ing of the stately lions that welcome all visitors to the Art Institute took place on November 23rd, bestowing on the building a resolutely festive air. Inside the building, an infinitely more delicate decoration has
While John Keats may often be remembered today as the quintessentially tragic Romantic figure, Nicholas Roe explains in his recent biography, John Keats: A New Life, that the reality of the celebrated poet’s character was far more complex. Keats’s life was dogged by insecurities, sexual frustration and drug use, and
Michael Slater, author of The Great Charles Dickens Scandal is not the only one preoccupied with the secret affairs of Charles Dickens. In his sweeping guide Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives, John Sutherland introduces and explores 294 of literature’s greatest artists, providing biographical details
Follow @yaleSCIbooks “If heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market…” – Thomas Jefferson, 1811 Thomas Jefferson was passionate about horticulture and his gardens at his home in Monticello. Peter J.
August Strindberg was not only a novelist, satirist, poet, photographer, painter, alchemist, and hellraiser but also, as Arthur Miller suggested, “the mad inventor of modern theater” who led playwriting out of the polite drawing room into the snakepit of psychological warfare. Best known for his play Miss Julie, Strindberg was
Listen to the podcast interview for Jews and Words on iTunes! Somewhere between the What is Jewish Culture? event at the 92Y launching the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization and the NPR Weekend Edition interview with Scott Simon, we managed to catch Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger to
Once a year, thousands of families chop down a living tree, bring it inside their homes, and decorate it with lights, tinsel, and ornaments. This is considered perfectly normal, despite objective reasoning to the contrary. Especially at Christmas time, tradition is king. And perhaps no tradition is more powerful than
Follow @yaleARTbooks In the century and a half since the Civil War, more than 75,000 books have been published about the war and its legacy. The figure speaks to the magnitude of its impact on American politics, economics, and culture. However, few of these books have examined how American art
Read an excerpt from Wall Street Last month Strike Debt, an offshoot group of Occupy Wall Street, began buying strangers’ debt in order to make it disappear. Another manifestation called Occupy Sandy swooped in during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy to assist gathering and delivering supplies, filming a documentary in the
One night in Germany in 2009, after having given a talk that pointed out the atrocities committed on African soil by Islam and Christianity, Wole Soyinka was confronted by a young man, who loudly remarked across the entire dinner table, “Africans, you must admit, are inherently inferior. You must be,