Almost as beloved as the works of Shakespeare is the pastime of speculating about Shakespeare. With the possible exception of Jesus, one is hard-pressed to think of another figure in Western history about whom so little is known and yet so much is written....
It’s not surprising that George Washington would suffer deification by his countrymen in the two hundred years following his death. Beyond all the grammar school encomiums and apocryphal stories about the man who “could not tell a lie,”...
Christopher Hitchens, in his 2001 book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, called it “an open secret that is too momentous and too awful to tell.” The year was 1968, and Richard M. Nixon, once cast off as a has-been by even his own Republican Party,...
Roger Miller, for my money the preeminent American philosopher of the 20th century, once famously sang that “You can’t take a shower in a parakeet cage / but you can be happy if you’ve a mind to.” Now, before you concern yourself...
Sadako Sasaki was born in Hiroshima, Japan on January 7th, 1943. She was just two years old when, on the morning of August 6th, 1945, the US bomber Enola Gay, situated some thirty-one thousand feet above, released upon the unsuspecting population of...
