20 March 2012
Stop by any neighborhood barbeque or office Christmas party and you’ll find two kinds of people: the bold, gregarious talkers, the folks the father of analytic psychiatry Carl Jung famously christened “extroverts;” and perhaps a few steps...
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24 January 2012
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind has been a household name since its publication in 1936. The story of a spoiled Southern belle plunged into poverty during the Civil War captivated readers from the start.
With 30 million...
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Lurid headlines and the crime that fueled them
One of the biggest news stories of 2011 was the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. To feed the public’s voracious appetite for news, editors put ethics aside and hacked into the phone messages of a missing British teen, adding another layer of heartache and drama to an already gut-wrenching story. It was big news...
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An anarchist and the president
The president’s admirers called it the “McKinley grip.” With his hand extended, the commander-in-chief would clasp well-wishers’ fingers, making it impossible for them to squeeze back. Then, with his free hand cupping their elbows, he would gently move them along. William McKinley could work his way through a receiving line of several hundred people in a...
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Rules of Civility
Back in the days when ladies’ handbags always matched their shoes and men wore hats without team insignias over the brims, novelists knew how to paint vivid images using only words. They had style and they weren’t afraid to use it. It looks like style just might be back “in style” when it comes to novels....
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Positively Ninety
Gert Pinkney, who lives at Fox Run, an Erickson Living community in Novi, Mich., told author Connie Springer her mantra is “Nothing can stop me!” She then added “I’m never depressed—I don’t have time!” Pinkney is one of 28 nonagenarians interviewed by Springer for her book Positively Ninety, a lively look at people in their...
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The Greater Journey
They traveled there not merely for rest, amusement, or the refined pleasures of the upper class. They braved the 3,000-mile journey for more than fine dining and a night at the opera. These 19th century Americans—many of them influential figures—left their young country for the Old World’s Paris, France, to work and to learn, in pursuit...
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The birth of the New Science
In 1600, Catholic inquisitors burned Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake. His crime—declaring there was an infinity of world systems beyond the nine planets. One hundred and five years later, the Queen of England knighted mathematician Isaac Newton. His achievement—the same assertion that cost Bruno his life. Something had happened in the century that separated...
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Mark Twain a century later
“I’ve struck it!…You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography.” Mark Twain wrote this revelation in the heat of composition. Since 1870, the author—known to friends as Samuel Clemens—had hammered out literary classics while struggling with his life story. After countless failed attempts, Clemens hit his stride, and...
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The untold story of a Civil War spy
History has had its fair share of spies: Major John Andre, Mata Hari, Kim Philby, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. This impressive roster of moles and traitors spans the American Revolution to the Cold War, and their stories are among the more illustrious cases of espionage. Even so, some of the quirkiest, and at times most romantic,...
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