William Hazlitt Was the Consummate Critic: Observant, Difficult, and Fascinating

The American Circus in All Its Glory

The Strange Politics of Gertrude Stein

How Did Cool Become Such a Big Deal?

A Tiny Village in Vermont Was the Perfect Spot to Hide Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Kay Boyle Knew Everyone and Saw It All

William James and the philosophy of pragmatism

Edgar Allan Poe’s Hatchet Jobs

Philosophers Who Like Stuff

Like modern democracies, ancient Greek democracy had an anger problem

Tru Life: How Truman Capote Became a Cautionary Tale of Celebrity Culture

A lot we know about pirates is not true, and a lot of what is true is not known

The Talented Mr. Huxley

John Ruskin Taught Victorian Readers and Travelers the Art of Cultivation

The Art of Thinking in Other People’s Heads: And What Is a Feuilleton?

The Talented Mr. Huxley

Robert Louis Stevenson Was a Sickly Man with a Robust Imagination