From Ann Wroe, a biographer of the first rank, comes a startlingly original look at one of the greatest poets in the Western tradition. Being Shelley aims to turn the poet's life inside out: rather t
Ann Wroe brings to life a rich and perplexing culture of a city physically divided-as so many communities are today-by political factions in this skillful re-creation of fourteenth-century Rodez. Note
Goethe claimed to know what light was. Galileo and Einstein both confessed they didn't. On the essential nature of light, and how it operates, the scientific jury is still out. There is still time, th
The foil to Jesus, the defiant antihero of the Easter story, mocking, skeptical Pilate is a historical figure who haunts our imagination. For some he is a saint, for others the embodiment of human wea
In 1491, as Machiavelli advised popes and princes and Leonardo da Vinci astonished the art world, a young man boarded a ship in Portugal bound for Ireland. He would be greeted upon arrival as the righ
The obituaries that appear in The Economist are remarkable because of the unpredictable selection of people to be written about, the surprising lives they lead—but also for the style in which the obit
