In the first third of the 15th century, while the Hundred Years War between England and France stormed dramatically to its denouement (Agincourt, Joan of Arc), and Muslims held on by their fingernails to their last fragment of Spain, and the Ottomans regrouped following the ravages of Tamurlane, and Ladislas II was breaking the power... Read More

Like the monster in some ghastly horror movie rising from the dead for the umpteenth time, the Space Shuttle is headed back to the launch pad. This grotesque, lethal white elephant — 14 deaths in 113 flights — is the grandest, grossest technological folly of our age. If the Shuttle has any reason for existing,... Read More

Rupert Brooke was speaking of the stars themselves, as seen from a country lane in Cambridgeshire on a crisp fall evening 95 years ago. It is hard not to feel, though, that he had some premonition of there one day being real human voices squeaking disconsolately to each other, "star to faint star," across the... Read More