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The U.S. dominates the fields of hardware and software. But it remains uniquely vulnerable because its so connected to the Internet.
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The owner of a seedy trailer park earns roughly $447,000 a year. But if the profit were less, would those accommodations remain available?
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What do teenagers use their phones for? Bonding, backbiting, bullying—and texting naked pictures. Lots and lots of naked pictures.
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Critics charged that Stellarwind was nearly worthless as an intelligence tool. Hayden has no doubts about the program’s effectiveness.
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Evangelicals reject the feminist label, yet they support feminist principles like equal pay for equal work and political equality.
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Romania, having suffered under two of the nastiest dictators of the Soviet period, is now in the crosshairs of Putin’s new cold war.
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Techniques for smoothing the passage of humans and vehicles date to the Romans, whose famous roads were lined with hand-laid stones.
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Fang Lizhi’s name is banned in China. But everyone there who continues to push for democratic rights owes a debt to the dissident.
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Churchgoers seem to live longer than non-churchgoers—an effect that may have more to do with stress reduction than divine intervention.
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Was Sappho a priestess? A teacher? A wedding planner? Was she even
a ‘lesbian’ in the modern sense of the word?
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The rapid rise of China seems to contradict the author’s assertion that democracy is better than autocracy at facilitating rapid economic growth.
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Is watching all the ‘Star Wars’ films in a single sitting (‘for purposes of research, naturally’) a reasonable way for an adult to make a living?
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Nixon was the master triangulator. Clinton adopted the template while enacting welfare reform. W. applied it to expanding Medicare.
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Donald Trump and Ted Cruz say they would keep Assad in power to defeat the Syrian jihad. But ISIS is a product of the Assad regime.
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Smuggling was an affirmation of the gospel of free trade—a fundamental tenet of 19th-century liberalism—and a protest against protectionism.
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David Kaczynski looked up to his brother. Ted went to Harvard at 16 and was on the faculty at Berkeley by 25. But then he became a terrorist.
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The longtime aspiration of Iranian leftists—that gradual, peaceful change could come from within the system—is now a pipe dream.
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Knowing the facts is not the same as knowing the future. Who could have foreseen that the Arab Spring would begin with a fruit vendor?
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Somewhere between mentally unstable drifters and the superstars of global jihad are lone wolves like the San Bernardino killers.
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Perry helped introduce GPS and stealth innovations to the U.S. military. But not all military problems have a technological fix.
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One of the most erotic yet discreetly hushed works of literature ever written.
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The Balkans in the 1990s were not unlike Syria and Iraq today. The international community condemned the slaughter but did little to stop it.
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The ancient Hebrews honored beards. Peter the Great taxed his shaggier subjects. Lincoln grew one to make his mug look more presidential.
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Kepler believed in witches. He probably even wondered about the potions his mother brewed. But when she was accused, he came to her aid.
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Speyer banks funded the London underground, placed the first Union Civil War bonds in Europe and built the Madeira-Mamore railroad.
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Gates preaches the value of civility and of work-life balance. While heading the Pentagon, he says, he never went to the office on a Saturday.
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Wilson’s wartime ‘information’ bureau was, in reality, about indoctrination. FDR spoke of closing financial institutions as ‘bank holidays.’
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Thanks to technology, officeholders have never been more in touch with their constituents. It is communication with each other that needs help.
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Yes, open offices cultivate camaraderie—among coworkers who all cringe as a colleague shouts at her soon-to-be ex-husband over the phone.
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Will the best brains of the future build things resembling our past innovations, or will they dedicate their time to tasks like making Twitter more user-friendly?
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The Japanese preserved ‘American traditional’ style, then repackaged it again stateside.
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In the late 1970s, North Korea began a bizarre kidnapping campaign to groom leaders for the communist wave about to sweep across Asia.
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Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, is also a city replete with movie theaters, soccer leagues, markets, hotels and hospitals.
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Shot by Chinese Communists, the U.S. soldier was posthumously enlisted in a club that made his name synonymous with Cold War paranoia.
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The author claims that ‘anti-Catholicism is largely a thing of the past.’ Perhaps he hasn’t heard about the Little Sisters of the Poor.
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The Enlightenment is often miscast as the ‘Age of Reason.’ In truth, it dethroned rational philosophy in favor of sociology and psychology.
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Art and thought thrived in ancient Athens, medieval Florence and fin-de-siècle Vienna. What do such disparate places have in common?
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Will Ukraine become part of the West, like Poland? Or will it be drawn back into Moscow’s shadow, like a larger version of Belarus?
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Cicero saved the republic from conspirators in 63 B.C., only to lose his own life (and hands) as Rome slid into civil war and dictatorship.
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During tense talks over steel imports, Baldrige insisted the tired Europeans work through lunch. He’d hidden snacks for his team nearby.
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Europe’s churches are empty—but don’t take that as a sign of reason’s triumph. More than half of Icelanders believe in elves and trolls.
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Our desire to be tied to a specific place may be linked to burying the dead: Home was where ancestors could be close to loved ones after death.
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Canada—that oft-parodied frozen realm of hockey arenas and Celine Dion—is more interesting than half of the American states.
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Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin thought rescuing the hostages was infeasible. His rival, Shimon Peres, insisted that surrender wasn’t an option.
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Haley produced two of the top-selling books of the second half of the 20th century.Was he a flawed artist or a ruthless hustler?
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Our politics has changed irreversibly since the founding, yet the Constitution has survived. Might that be because it rests on eternal truths?
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Augustine was a man obsessed with sex. It was the cause of his conversion crisis, which ended when he heard a child’s voice saying ‘tolle, lege.’
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Mao rather richly presented the withdrawal from Indian territory as a show of ‘restraint’ when pressing for a seat on the U.N. Security Council.
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Stalin targeted the relatives, assistants and friends of his inner circle. Yet his lieutenants kept the Soviet state together after his death.
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Smarter people, on average, are more patient and interested in saving. And indeed national savings rates correlate with IQ scores.
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American and British officers made uneasy allies. Eisenhower compared their early encounters to those of a bulldog and tomcat.
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Does the brutal treatment of California farm workers in the 1930s explain the ideas of Goldwater, Reagan and the Koch brothers?
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The convenient and inexpensive hamburger combines the white bread and red meat that until recently were available only to the rich.
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In the 1950s, social scientists tried to preserve an archive of human experience on microcards. Their experience is a parable for our digital era.
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The NFL is arguably ‘an athletic interpretation of a core issue facing the United States: how to use incredible power with self-restraint.’
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How did an ideology supposedly predicated on struggle and revolution become the worldview of tenured professors with hefty pension plans?
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There is persuasive evidence that large bodies have smashed into the Earth on a regular basis —every 20 million to 30 million years or so.
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Privileged women have turned breast-feeding—considered repulsive a few decades ago—into yet another arena for maternal competition.
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Excessive credit growth and bubbles—the consequence of over-easy monetary policies—are more dangerous than the threat of deflation.
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McKinley’s rise to the presidency is one of the major turning points in U.S. history, but it has never received the attention it deserves.
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We should celebrate the luxury of craft beer and organic coffee beans—but also the fact that millions are fed thanks to industrial agriculture.
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No disaster in recorded history compared to the Lisbon cataclysm. Some asked why God allowed such evil. Others saw it as divine punishment.
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Ruth Scurr reviews “At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails” by Sarah Bakewell.
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Alexandra Mullen reviews “Weatherland: Writers & Artists Under English Skies” by Alexandra Harris.
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Harold Holzer reviews “The Immortal Irishman” by Timothy Egan, an irresistible story of an Irish exile who won fame in the U.S. Civil War.
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Roger Lowenstein reviews “The Golden Lad: The Haunting Story of Quentin and Theodore Roosevelt” by Eric Burns.
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D.G. Hart reviews “Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion” by Susan Jacoby.
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Rien Fertel reviews “Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat” by Marta Zaraska.
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Reviews of “The Dead Bird” by Margaret Wise Brown and other picture books.
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A review of “The King of Fear,” by Drew Chapman.
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David Wootton reviews “The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World” by William Egginton.
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Reviews of “The Castle Cross of the Magnet Carter” by Kia Corthron and “I Met Someone” by Bruce Wagner.
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The author, most recently, of “On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics” on Soviet women.
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A revelatory history of American abolitionism.
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A reporter in 1884 judged the Washington Monument ‘absurdly unworthy of its subject.’
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Frank Lloyd Wright pitched his Broadacre City design as a cure for the ‘economic, aesthetic and moral chaos’ of the 1930s.
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The odd walking style that fashion models affect on the catwalk is also employed by chimpanzees to stay upright.
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Darwin was fascinated by the question of the origin of life, but it did not bear on his theory of evolution.
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From the ‘Catholic Encyclopedia’ to a 1761 guide to the prostitutes of London’s Covent Garden.
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Eleanor Roosevelt became friends with a young black woman who refused to curtsy to her.
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The jump shot was invented by a 13-year-old seeking an edge against his older brother.
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Tipped waiters receive the same federal minimum wage they have for two decades: $2.13 an hour.
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A Brazilian novelist climbs up an almond tree with a suitcase in hand and disappears.
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Two brothers toiling on the cacao plantations of the Ivory Coast must fight together to survive.
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Christianity’s move from Aramaic and Greek into Latin gave the Roman church its imperial bearing.
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The author of ‘The Fame Lunches: On Wounded Icons, Money, Sex, the Brontes, and the Importance of Handbags’ on novels of despair.
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Was Demjanjuk a vicious murderer who then lied his way into a quiet life as an American auto worker?
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A bill of rights was the No. 1 priority of the first Congress. But no one thought they were producing sacred writ.
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Even the greatest fighter in the world can be cowardly.
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Washington traveled through all 13 states to promote the newborn federal government.
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The next coach might not be better, but that doesn’t mean a change didn’t ‘need’ to made.
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Looking for a lost cat, an Oxford schoolgirl finds something strange in the basement: a time machine.
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‘The Yid’ amends the history of Jews in the Soviet Union, replacing fear with Tarantino-esque swagger.
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A visiting writer finds students besieged by screens. One reports wasting 238 hours a week.
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By night, someone is sculpting trees into marvelous creatures.
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“Happy isn’t even a real idea,” the mathematician claims. ‘It’s just like love.’
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The author of “First Bite: How We Learn to Eat” on eating disorders.
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An acclaimed novelist gives up English prose for the ‘voluntary exile’ of writing exclusively in Italian.
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Stories that reflect badly on nearly everyone—the Warners, the Selznicks and, oh yes, the Steins.
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When he took command, MacArthur had a ragtag bunch of soldiers and almost no modern planes. He used every chance to request more materiel and men.
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The straits of Mackinac were once the nexus of a sprawling Indian empire—the center of the world.
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He reconnoitered with Baden-Powell, outtalked T.R. and set out to find Montezuma’s lost city.
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A novel finds soldiers fixing roads, children stopping them on patrol to ask for chocolate, and tensions seething just below the surface.
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Parents of a brain-dead boy agonize over whether to donate his heart. To the eye he seems only asleep.
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Pound knew he had gone wrong. He regretted indulging in the ‘stupid suburban prejudice’ of anti-Semitism and felt he’d made ‘a botch’ of his magnum opus, the “Cantos.”
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K2 is 784 feet shorter than Mount Everest—and 10 times harder to climb.
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A boy’s idyll in a dozy Mexican town abruptly ends when violence erupts and his parents disappear.
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A newborn child. Odd noises and strange nighttime presences. Is there a ghost about?
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The author of “Queen of Spies: Daphne Park, Britain’s Cold War Spy Master” on spies.
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Our huge heads make birth painful. Mother and fetus battle for nutrients. Sometimes evolution settles for “good enough.”
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Lincoln loved chess, chewed apples from the top down and let his boys run wild in the law office.
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Neither land nor ocean was ideal for early life, but moon-made tides formed nicely in-between zones.
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To be wary of idealism may seem sensible, but is it really possible to extract ideology from politics?
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The war broke nations. The rebels in Dublin saluted the Germans
as their “gallant allies.”
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In the premodern era groups from all across the world shared technologies—gunpowder included.
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The great general Uhtred is a Clint Eastwood type: “Go ahead, make my day.”
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Kurt Vonnegut meets “Harry Potter.”
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An eye-opening tale about the sinking of a German ship carrying civilians fleeing the Red Army.
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Alexander Chee’s heroine views her life as a perpetual masquerade, part opéra bouffe, part high tragedy.
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The author, most recently, of “Angels of the Underground” on Americans under Japanese occupation.
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The diagnosis of autism has risen markedly in recent years, climbing from a rate of 4 to 5 cases per 10,000 people in 1966 to approximately 1 per 100 today.
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Andrew Jackson drove a convoy of chained slaves. It was known as a ‘coffle.’
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When 16-year-old Zahra al-Azzo was murdered by her brother for being raped, her family threw a party.
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From its first issue the paper had a messianic mission—integration, not separation, of the races.
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When the British try to modernize, they have a knack for doing it very badly.
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In 1928, a 125-foot high wall of water raced to the ocean, killing more than 400.
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It’s easy to be seduced by just-so stories about the origins of language.
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Stefan Zweig was internationally famous, Joseph Roth’s career was faltering. It didn’t matter: Their fates would be one.
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Jakob Wassermann buried a lush and brutal account of his own disastrous marriage inside a novel.
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“I tend to write simple poems with rocks in them,” Murphy explains.
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The author, most recently, of “Adventures in Human Being” on transformation.
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An orphan embarks on a quest to find his best friend Sarah—who happens to be a horse.
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Party bosses wanted Taft. TR wanted the presidency back. He thought primaries would let the voters decide.
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The lotus became a byword for purity because it repels mud. Close-packed pimples deny a grip to sticky fluids.
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A tale of a son’s coming of age amid BMWs, Lamborghinis, Porsches—and Nazi tanks.
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Husband and wife both had stockbroker fathers and Oxbridge educations. Both were also Jewish.
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Shakers outlawed sex and banned the use of rugs—a favorite hiding place, they thought, for devils.
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A Jamesian novel that would scandalize James.
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Individualism was just a blip between imperial hierarchies and the digitally connected world.
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The author of “The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution” recommends histories that read like novels.
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