Interviews

Question Marx: Ágnes Heller on Continued “Misinterpretations of Karl Marx's Philosophy”
Question Marx: Ágnes Heller on Continued “Misinterpretations of Karl Marx's Philosophy”
In the spring of 1849, Karl Marx was expelled from Prussia, then from France, and finally settled in London with his family and almost nothing else. He spent the next... Read more...
Much Ado About Something: Dennis Kennedy on William Shakespeare's Enduring Global Appeal
Much Ado About Something: Dennis Kennedy on William Shakespeare's Enduring Global Appeal
In 1607, a ship called the Red Dragon anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone on the West African trade routes of the East India Company. The crew, restless and... Read more...
David Chinitz
"A Great Symphony in a Minor Key:" David Chinitz Tunes in to "The Musical Quality" of T.S. Eliot's Writing
In the autumn of 1921, T. S. Eliot checked himself into a sanatorium in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the verge of a breakdown. He was thirty-three years old, exhausted by his... Read more...
“King of the Cats”: Paul Muldoon on the Life and Work of W. B. Yeats
“King of the Cats”: Paul Muldoon on the Life and Work of W. B. Yeats
In the autumn of 1923, William Butler Yeats received a telephone call at his home in Dublin informing him that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He... Read more...
Economy Class: Nicholas Wapshott Explains Why John Maynard Keynes Was Ahead of His Time
Economy Class: Nicholas Wapshott Explains Why John Maynard Keynes Was Ahead of His Time
In the autumn of 1930, John Maynard Keynes sat down and wrote an essay that began with what appeared to be an outrageous prediction. The world was in the grip... Read more...
Charles Rosen
Bach’s Second Coming: Charles Rosen on the Great Bach Revival
On the morning of March 11, 1829, a twenty-year-old conductor named Felix Mendelssohn stood before an orchestra and chorus in the Berlin Singakademie and prepared to perform a work that... Read more...
Nicholas Wapshott
The Road to Hayek: Nicholas Wapshott on the Life and Work of Economist Friedrich Hayek
In the early 1930s, two of the most brilliant economists in the world engaged in a public debate in academic journals that was so fierce, so personal, and so consequential... Read more...
Play by Play: James McConkey on a “Compassionate Irony” and “Spiritual Yearning” That Underline Anton Chekhov's Works
Play by Play: James McConkey on a “Compassionate Irony” and “Spiritual Yearning” That Underline Anton Chekhov's Works
In the spring of 1890, Anton Chekhov did something that baffled everyone who knew him. He was thirty years old, already celebrated as one of Russia's finest writers, and suffering... Read more...
Federico Pacchioni
Poetry in Motion (Picture): Federico Pacchioni Reviews The “Vigor and Originality” of Federico Fellini's Films
In the winter of 1959, Federico Fellini arrived on the set of what would become La Dolce Vita with a script that was, by most accounts, still unfinished. His producer, Dino... Read more...
Mind Over (Dark) Matter: Irwin Shapiro Says Albert Einstein's Theories Have Stood The Test of Time (So Far)
Mind Over (Dark) Matter: Irwin Shapiro Says Albert Einstein's Theories Have Stood The Test of Time (So Far)
Consider the strangeness of this everyday miracle: each time a GPS receiver locks onto a position or a spacecraft adjusts its trajectory across millions of miles of near-emptiness, it is... Read more...
From Old Vienna to New Philosophy: Allan Janik Analyzes Ludwig Wittgenstein's Early Thought
From Old Vienna to New Philosophy: Allan Janik Analyzes Ludwig Wittgenstein's Early Thought
In the winter of 1919, an Austrian prisoner of war sat in an Italian detention camp and put the finishing touches on a manuscript he had been writing in the... Read more...
Rosamund Bartlett
A Russian Life: Rosamund Bartlett On Leo Tolstoy's Transition From Writing to Social Activism
In the early hours of November 10, 1910, a frail eighty-two-year-old man slipped out of his estate at Yasnaya Polyana in the darkness, leaving behind his wife, his family, and... Read more...