The Nobel for Literature is Awarded
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The Quest of the Historical Jesus!
/Our book today is Albert Schweitzer’s Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, translated into English as The Quest of the Historical Jesus by W. Montgomery over a century ago. Schweitzer published the book first in 1906 and then thoroughly rewrote it for a 1913 edition, and as editor John Bowden writes with little repressed horror, the Montgomery translation [...]
Read MoreIn Paperback: The Great Sea
/David Abulafia's big book - now in paperback - tackles a subject pivotal to huge swaths of human history: the Mediterraean, that watery intersection of Europe, Asia, and Africa
Read MoreBook Review: The Kraus Project
/The famous novelist presents some essays by a pre-war Viennese intellectual and helps us all to understand those works.
Read MoreJFK in the Senate
/Before he became one of America's most famous presidents, John Kennedy was a hot-shot senator and a photogenic winner of the Pulitzer Prize. But did the Senate years help to form the Oval Office years?
Read MoreBook Review: Jefferson and Hamilton
/A master historian analyzes the tempestuous relationship between two titans of the newborn United States
Read MoreA Silver-Plated Spoon!
/Our book today is A Silver-Plated Spoon, the sparkling 1959 memoir by John Ian Russell, who in 1953 became, somewhat late in life, the 13th Duke of Bedford and the master of spectacular Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire. It was an amazing ascension – the family has occupied the place for four centuries – but Russell [...]
Read MoreFrustrated Urges in the Penny Press!
/There’s a certain frustration that can’t be avoided when you read as much book-coverage in the Penny Press as I do. You become familiar with all the regular players in the game (indeed, you sometimes perforce become a minor such player yourself), you learn their quirks and strengths and weaknesses, and you also become familiar [...]
Read MoreAttending Oxford: Rome’s Italian Wars!
/The Oxford University Press, centuries old and the biggest academic press in the world, founded its World’s Classics series in 1906 (having bought the imprimatur lock, stock, and barrel from the brilliant publisher Grant Richards in 1901). For over a hundred years, the line has produced reasonably-priced and expertly-edited canonical texts, proving that great and [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Dirty Words in Deadwood
/The cult favorite HBO western inspires an anthology of essays devoted to the show's most outrageous feature: its language (foul and otherwise)
Read MoreA Chip off the Old Bwana
/How do you follow up on creating Tarzan of the Apes? You give the Ape-Man a son, stranding him in the jungle, and sending him out on hair-raising adventures of his own. And if you're lucky, a legendary comic book artist will come along and draw it all.
Read MoreFrom the Archives: In the Pocket of Satan
/A girl, a widow, a matriarch, a mother, a businesswoman, and a minister's slave: a new history traces the Salem Witch Trials through the lives of six women who paid dearly for their proximity to one of the most mysterious incidents in American history
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