“I might be a bilingual journalist, the holder of a Master’s degree from the Sorbonne, but navigating the world remained something he could do that I could not.”
France
Posted inFeature, Story
Exilium Vita Est: The Island Home of Victor Hugo
Emma Jacobs takes us on an illustrated journey of Hugo’s writing life in exile on Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables.
Posted inArts & Culture, History, Science & Nature, Story
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Mirrors
Mirrors are sparkly and shiny and hypnotic. They’ve fascinated us for thousands of years. And they might show us a lot more about our society’s misplaced priorities than we care to see.
Posted inStory
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
In fraught games of power politics, sometimes the best revenge is not being exiled to die alone on an island in the South Atlantic.
Posted inStory
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Martinique to Merveilleuse
Even the Reign of Terror was no match for a determined young woman with a pug and a prophecy on her side.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story
How Diderot’s Encyclopedia Challenged the King
The encyclopedists’ plan to catalog knowledge seemed harmless enough. But what they intended was far more subversive: to restructure knowledge itself.
Posted inNonfiction
Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
When your husband and male heirs are too useless or too dead to rule, you have to take matters into your own poison-gloved hands.
Posted inNonfiction
Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
Kings and popes thought she was their pawn. The Merchant’s Daughter begged to differ.
Posted inNonfiction
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine
Life gets busy when you have empires to build and marriages to annul.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
Why Did a Young Woman Broadcast Her Death?
An 18-year-old Parisian woman streams her suicide on social media.