Warning: Do not trust fiction that offers “the temptation of the impossible.” That was critic Alphonse de Lamartine’s 1862 reaction to Victor Hugo’s gargantuan novel, Les Misérables. Now readers of Mario Vargas Llosa’s... Read More

The Emancipation Proclamation, the law that freed the slaves in the United States, was signed in 1863, but the dastardly institution lived on in the South Pacific until the late 1880s, driven by displaced southern slave owners and U.S.... Read More

“The history of tango is as elusive as the history of the Argentine people,” the author writes. In spite of this, Baim presents an engaging portrait of the dance and music that are synonymous with the culture of Argentina. The author... Read More

Reconstruction remains one of the most contentious topics in American history. For a number of years, historians argued that Reconstruction had been counterproductive and had negatively impacted black-white relations in the South. And... Read More

It was an unjust law that begged to be broken. The Fugitive Slave Law, passed in 1850, was an act of desperation on the part of Southern slave holders. They increasingly saw people, whom they considered their property, escaping to... Read More

On June 1, 1967, the pop music world was “turned upside-down, its resultant sounds proving to be the shape of all things to come,” with the release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the author writes. Often... Read More

The mysterious stranger with hypnotic eyes, the spooky, candlelit castle with strange nighttime sounds, the disturbing family secret, and the supernatural threat… all are part of the Gothic, the genre of romantic mystery that sparked... Read More

Alexander is obsessed with air—how to move it, heat it, cool it and clean it. In late twentieth-century South Africa, where millions crumble under weighty issues such as race, colonialism, revolution and AIDS, Alex clings to nothing.... Read More