When you walk into the Saint Louis Art Museum’s new exhibit—Ancient Splendor: Rome in the Time of Trajan—the emperor himself greets you. His right hand is raised, index finger lifted: he is about to speak. The commanding air comes naturally to him; he rose through the army, suffering hardship alongside…
In Elizabeth Finch, Julian Barnes’s character falls platonically in love with one of his teachers, a woman whose clarity and intelligence become his lodestar. After her death, he vows to overcome his habitual procrastination and research a historical figure he suspects she wanted him to write about. “To please the…
Something dark and sharp must live deep inside me, because when I read “There Are No Psychopaths,” I am disappointed. Psychopaths explain so much. The twisted little smile that crosses someone’s face, quickly hidden, after they cause pain. The impulse, spreading fast these days, to watch the world burn.