It was a momentous decision, not only for Lawrence and the university but also for science—and, arguably, for the rest of us. For while Lawrence would have found success at almost any institution, Berkeley was one of the few whose ambitions...
He wanted to be on air. So between the church programs, the vitamin programs, the chunks of time bought up in fifteen-minute slots, Art came on to announce what was up next. The station signed off at midnight, but by eleven o’clock no one...
Scott led a dual life, one as a legal functionary, man of affairs, public-spirited citizen, and prominent figure, the other as poet, imaginative writer, and reflective thinker exploring in the solitude of his spirit the meaning of human...
We all owe our lives to someone’s vision and someone else’s blind spot, but it’s seldom quite so literal: I owe my existence to that tumor and the sight lines that developed around it.
As we look back upon the first and greatest ordeal of dismemberment suffered by the British Empire, we can see clearly enough from our vantage point how very acute George the Third was when he observed to Lord North in 1774: “The dye is now...
The scrutiny to which South Africa is incessantly exposed is a search for answers to two sets of questions. The questions are complex. Therefore the answers are complex and controversial. Even the choice of answers is constantly influenced...
He was old when we met him first, the grizzled veteran of a thousand wars, literary and other, and standing then on the brink of his eightieth birthday. They said that he would celebrate the occasion quietly in Paris, taking the train from...
