If you’ve traveled to Holmes County, Ohio, you’ve probably seen the quaint farms with the iconic bank barns and corn silos, the horse-drawn buggies, the men with long beards and flat-brimmed hats, and the women clad in … Read the article
Around the age of 14, I started to fall in love with Italian men. I fell hard for 70s actors like Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. I adored New York’s governor Mario Cuomo. I was mad for … Read the article
“Well. At least we weren’t coal miners.”
I heard that many a time, at family reunions or other gatherings, as I grew up.
On the surface, it sounds, well. snooty. Or worse—condescending.
In 1921, Frances Lester Warner described a Christmas Eve scene in Boston with “red and white crystal” in shop windows, “lights gleaming on the slippery cross-streets, throngs of last-minute shoppers” and “bright posters still cheerfully advising us … Read the article
Alva Smith, her southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America’s great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts. Ignored by New York’s old-money circles and determined to win … Read the article
…let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: … Read the article
On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove―to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his pregnant wife―“that the hours of … Read the article
The Forbidden City is an iconic image of imperial power. Its imposing gate channels today’s tourists to a glimpse of China’s awe-inspiring dynastic history. The vast courtyards, towering pavilions, and exhibited treasures uphold a vision—pervasive in western … Read the article
A reporter once told me that our library could pass for a crime lab. Skulls detailing the history of humanity line the shelves and perch on pedestals, beginning with a diminutive acrylic cast of Australopithecus afarensis, … Read the article
Journey back to New York City in the days in which our nation was a young country, still finding its way—before The Alienist, before Gangs of New York… where the Wall Street as we know it was … Read the article