Interviews

A Prince Among Friends: Philip Bobbitt on Niccolò Machiavelli's “Strikingly Original” Mind
A Prince Among Friends: Philip Bobbitt on Niccolò Machiavelli's “Strikingly Original” Mind
In the spring of 1513, a man sat in a small farmhouse outside Florence and wrote a short book about power that would get him condemned as the devil's secretary,... Read more...
Not Just The Belle of Amherst: Martha Nell Smith on Emily Dickinson's "Deep and Abundant" Poetry
Not Just The Belle of Amherst: Martha Nell Smith on Emily Dickinson's "Deep and Abundant" Poetry
In the summer of 1870, a literary critic named Thomas Wentworth Higginson finally made the journey he had been postponing for eight years. He had been corresponding with Emily Dickinson... Read more...
Richard Brown
A Portrait of the Artist: Richard Brown Says James Joyce's Works “Bubble Over with Creative Exuberance”
In June of 1904, a twenty-two-year-old James Joyce approached a young woman named Nora Barnacle on Nassau Street in Dublin and asked her to walk with him. She agreed. It... Read more...
Grace Under Pressure: Scott Donaldson on the Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway
Grace Under Pressure: Scott Donaldson on the Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway
In the summer of 1961, a man sat down at his typewriter in Ketchum, Idaho, and typed a single sentence. Then he deleted it. He tried again. Deleted it again.... Read more...
Richard Allen
On Pins and Needles: Richard Allen Explains Why Alfred Hitchcock is a "Master of Suspense"
In the summer of 1960, audiences lining up for Alfred Hitchcock's new film at cinemas across America encountered something they had never seen before: a sign on the door informing... Read more...
Alexa Huang
“Thou Art Translated”: Alexa Huang on William Shakespeare's Enduring Global Appeal
In 1607, a ship called the Red Dragon anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone, along the East India Company's West African trade routes. The crew, restless and far from... Read more...
Hitting the Right Notes: Jeffrey Kallberg Tunes Into Frédéric Chopin's "Compositional Complexities"
Hitting the Right Notes: Jeffrey Kallberg Tunes Into Frédéric Chopin's "Compositional Complexities"
In the autumn of 1848, Frédéric Chopin gave what would prove to be his final public concert, in the Guildhall in London. He was thirty-eight years old and so weakened... Read more...
The Migrant's Tale: Susan Shillinglaw on Why John Steinbeck's Epic, The Grapes of Wrath, is a “Powerful and Ambitious Book”
The Migrant's Tale: Susan Shillinglaw on Why John Steinbeck's Epic, The Grapes of Wrath, is a “Powerful and Ambitious Book”
In the summer of 1937, John Steinbeck traveled to the agricultural labor camps of California's Central Valley and spent weeks among the migrant workers who had fled the Dust Bowl.... Read more...
Waking Up to Finnegans Wake: Finn Fordham on "Textual Complexities" of James Joyce's Most "Absorbing" Novel
Waking Up to Finnegans Wake: Finn Fordham on "Textual Complexities" of James Joyce's Most "Absorbing" Novel
In 1923, James Joyce sat down and wrote the first pages of what he called, for the next sixteen years, Work in Progress. He had just finished Ulysses, a novel that... Read more...
Peter Temin
The Key to Keynes: Peter Temin Analyzes John Maynard Keynes' “Sophisticated and Innovative Economics”
In the summer of 1919, John Maynard Keynes resigned from the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference and took the night train to London in a state of moral... Read more...
By His Own Design: Robert Twombly on The Individualism of Frank Lloyd Wright
By His Own Design: Robert Twombly on The Individualism of Frank Lloyd Wright
In 1936, a 68-year-old architect who had not received a significant commission in nearly a decade was handed a modest budget and asked to design a weekend retreat for a... Read more...
Stephen Gaukroger
A “Natural” Philosopher: Stephen Gaukroger on René Descartes' “Twists and Turns of Intellect”
In the winter of 1649, René Descartes received an invitation he had been resisting for years, and finally, against his better judgment, accepted it. Queen Christina of Sweden, one of... Read more...