Sublime

De Lesseps’s grandiosity, or capacity for self-delusion, made him, like Eugène Bontoux, an exceptionally effective promoter.

Oscar Villadolid, a boy at the time, remembers a familiar scene from the aftermath of Manila’s “liberation.” A GI came down his street handing out cigarettes and Hershey bars. Speaking slowly, he asked Villadolid’s name. When Villadolid replied easily in English, the soldier was startled. “How’d ya learn American?” he asked. Villadolid explained th

The latest story concerned Hemingway’s knocking a man down for calling him a big fat slob. “You can call me a slob,” Hemingway had said, “but you can’t call me a big fat slob.” Then he struck him down. The natives of Bimini set the incident to music, and if they were sure Hemingway was not within earshot, they would sing in a calypso beat, “The big

Once Hemingway signed with Scribners, Max Perkins thereupon became the moderator in the literary friendship between Ernest and Scott.

A testament to the idealism and the talents of the Jesuits of Latin America were the ‘Reductions’ (reducciones) they established in Paraguay, Argentina and southern Brazil: these were autonomous Indian communities, with townships, schools, churches, libraries, public arts and native industries; from 1609 to 1768, many of these Reductions together c

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but by blood”—his last words before execution were recorded, and, as has often been noted, they were prophetic. But they were also only partly true. Certain crimes were ceased by the Civil War, but they have not been purged. Not yet. Harpers Ferry is

In late July 1906, a couple of months after their contracts with Hunt expired, the government stepped in and sent home all of the Filipinos—except five who stayed on as witnesses in Hunt's trial. The court cases dragged on. Five Filipino witnesses were kept in America until March 1907. On March 20, they too returned to the Philippines.