Interviews

California Dreaming: Jay Parini Explains How John Steinbeck's West Coast Roots Influenced His Writing
California Dreaming: Jay Parini Explains How John Steinbeck's West Coast Roots Influenced His Writing
In the spring of 1938, John Steinbeck drove into the migrant labor camps of California's San Joaquin Valley and saw something that made him so furious he could barely hold... Read more...
A Man of His Times: Jonathan Sperber Explains Why Karl Marx's Ideas Are History
A Man of His Times: Jonathan Sperber Explains Why Karl Marx's Ideas Are History
On the afternoon of March 17, 1883, eleven people gathered in a small cemetery in Highgate, London, to bury Karl Marx. There was no state funeral, no public procession, no... Read more...
Henry Allison
Transcendental Idealism: Henry Allison on “Complexities” of Immanuel Kant's Philosophy
In the winter of 1787, Immanuel Kant sat down to revise the most important book he had ever written. The first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, published six years... Read more...
Roy Foster: W. B. Yeats' Poetic Voice “Uses Tradition and Modernity”
Roy Foster: W. B. Yeats' Poetic Voice “Uses Tradition and Modernity”
Few poets have managed to bind together the weight of tradition and the daring of modernity as seamlessly as W. B. Yeats. Born in Dublin in 1865, Yeats emerged as... Read more...
Peter Lax
"The Most Powerful Brain": Peter Lax on the Life and Genius of John von Neumann
It is rare in any century for a single mind to redefine the landscape of multiple disciplines, yet John von Neumann managed precisely that. A mathematician of breathtaking range, he... Read more...
Gary Saul Morson
Writer's Diary: Gary Saul Morson on How Fyodor Dostoevsky Created “An Intimate Bond Between Ideas and Personality”
In April 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested in St. Petersburg for participating in a circle of intellectuals who had been reading and discussing banned socialist literature. He was twenty-seven years... Read more...
Julian Preece
“Fictions That Contradict Themselves:” Julian Preece Sheds Light on Franz Kafka’s Darkness
In 1923, Franz Kafka met a young woman named Dora Diamant at a Baltic Sea resort and, for the first time in his life, left Prague to live with someone... Read more...
John Gribbin
Making Waves: John Gribbin on Why Erwin Schrödinger's Famous Paradox is the Cat's Meow
In the autumn of 1935, Erwin Schrödinger sat down to write a letter to Albert Einstein that contained, buried within its pages, one of the most famous thought experiments in... Read more...
No Napoleon Complex: Alan Strauss-Schom’s Critical View of the French Emperor
No Napoleon Complex: Alan Strauss-Schom’s Critical View of the French Emperor
The temperature at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, was unremarkable. What was remarkable was that Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who had outmaneuvered the greatest generals in Europe for two decades,... Read more...
Oliver and Other Twists: Paul Schlicke Reviews Charles Dickens' “Superb Lot” of Books
Oliver and Other Twists: Paul Schlicke Reviews Charles Dickens' “Superb Lot” of Books
In the winter of 1843, Charles Dickens was in financial difficulty, his recent novels had disappointed, and he was casting around for something that might restore both his fortunes and... Read more...
Martin Davis
It's All Logic: Martin Davis “Decodes” Alan Turing's Pioneering Work
In the summer of 1952, Alan Turing reported a burglary at his home in Wilmslow, England. The police investigation that followed led not to the prosecution of the thief but... Read more...
Graham Parkes
Thus Spoke Friedrich Nietzsche: Graham Parkes on the Philosopher’s “Understanding of the Human Mind”
In January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche stepped out of his lodgings in Turin and witnessed a horse being flogged by its driver in the Piazza Carlo Alberto. He threw his arms... Read more...