Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence to a family of minor nobility. He entered into Florentine politics in 1295, but he and his party were forced into exile in a hostile political climate in 1301. Taking asylum in Ravenna late in life, Dante completed his Divine Commedia, considered one of the most important works of Western literature, before his death in 1321.
Clive James (1939—2019), author of the best-selling Cultural Amnesia and Poetry Notebook, was an Officer of the Order of Australia and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. His writing appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.
Dogs get a bad intellectual rap. Sure, they’re considered the friendliest of the major pet groups. We love our dogs. But it’s cats who get the respect when it comes to brain power. I blame the Egyptians for putting our feline overlords on their original pedestals. When you come home from work, it’s the cat who you expect […]
Coming up with the title to a work is hard (except for New York Post headline writers), which makes for a convenient loophole in copyright law: Titles can’t be copyrighted. So, yes, there can be a Hemingway book titled For Whom the Bell Tolls (the title itself is an allusion to a John Donne poem), […]
