A Grammar of Intimacy
The author of this exemplary book dealing with sympathy in Romantic-era literature is Stacey McDowell, associate professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies (Univ. of Warwick). I found the word…
Princess Diana’s Birthday
Today marks Princess Diana’s 65th birthday. The book under review here details how she was entrapped into giving a BBC television interview with Martin Bashir, the very definition of a…
This Land is Your Land
Let’s go on a road trip! Professor Beverly Gage, who teaches U.S. history at Yale, did just that starting in 2023 in preparation for her new book. This article is…
NERO acted on stage as HERCULES
Who wrote the longest play to survive from antiquity? Answer: we don’t know! But we do know it is 1,996 lines long. In comparison, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is 4,024 lines. The…
A New Understanding of the Founding of Rome
Much more than a book about Roman theatre, this book represents a seismic shift in our understanding about the origin of Rome. For many if not most scholars, this new…
Literary Extravagance
Public Discontent & The Trap of a Technocrat. That is the subheadline in a 2025 article by Brian Connelly. “The technocrat’s trap,” he wrote, “refers to inherent issues of governing…
How to Make a Judge Angry
Photo: a marble bust of Cicero “The existence of a man of immense authority whose anger has political currency threatens the survival of the Republic.” No, this is not a…
Modern Revolutions Crave a Leviathan
This book by Dan Edelstein (Professor of French at Stanford Univ.) surveys the concept of what a revolution meant from ancient to recent times. A key finding he makes is…
Applying Comics Theory to Ancient texts
Over the centuries, the texts that have been rescued by time from ancient Greece and Rome have been studied in many ways. As human ingenuity is never lacking, Natalie Swain…
Homer’s Iliad 2.0
Anyone with even a passing interest in ancient Greece, or the foundation of Western literature, has read Homer’s Iliad. That original, from the mists of time more than 4,000 years…