The prospect of hanging, as Samuel Johnson observed, "concentrates the mind wonderfully." We're counting on that kind of concentration to keep us from falling off the infamous "fiscal cliff."
A gripping account of a doomed attempt to climb Mount Everest has won Britain's leading nonfiction book prize.
An exhibition on the history of lunch in New York City over the past 150 years serves up some delicious tidbits.
"They love him, gentlemen, and they respect him, not only for himself, but for his character, for his integrity and his iron will, but they love him most for the enemies he has made."
British poet Ted Hughes was honored Tuesday with a memorial stone in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, joining a line of great British writers going back to Chaucer.
THE FORGOTTEN FOUNDING FATHER: NOAH WEBSTER'S OBSESSION AND THE CREATION OF AN AMERICAN CULTURE
Every once in a while, a writer gets a good idea, and a couple of years ago, journalist and bibliophile William W. Starr got one. Realizing that 2009 was the tercentenary of the birth of Samuel Johnson, the famed English lexicographer and essayist, Mr. Starr decided to retrace the steps of the journey Johnson and his devoted biographer James Boswell made to Scotland in 1773.
Some authors are so major that even their minor efforts deserve attention. Such a man is Paul Johnson, the English writer whose 15 books include an outstanding history of Christianity and several worthy popular compilations on subjects including the American people, the English people and the birth and evolution of modern times.
Since ancient man produced the first crude wine in sunken tanks dug into the earth, possibly in Colchis, the legendary land of the Golden Fleece (part of what is now the Republic of Georgia), a certain romance has attached itself to all things vinous.
