An abridged version of this essay appeared in the journal n+1 (Winter 2007). PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE I set out...

Called by collaborator Moss Hart “the greatest amateur I ever met,” COLE PORTER (1891-1964) treated the plots and characters of his Broadway shows and...

Is it so small a thing To have enjoy’d the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought,...

NANCY SINATRA (born 1940) was everywhere in the mid-1960s: dressed in tight leather as a motorcycle mama in The Wild Angels, blowing minds with...

FROM THE STRUGGLE between Cartesian science and the Classics lampooned by Jonathan Swift in his “Battle of the Books,” to the “Two Cultures” argument...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, this week, to the following high-, low-, no-, and hilobrow heroes. Click here for more HiLo Hero birthdays. JUNE 7 Time is...

Filmmaker CHANTAL AKERMAN (born 1950), the arthouse precursor to Charlie Kaufman, Jem Cohen, and even Sam Mendes, took one small step for a woman,...

PANCHO VILLA (born Doroteo Aranga Arámbula; 1878-1923) was an outlaw with a world-class strategic intelligence who became a general during the chaotic and unending...