Connie Goodwin is a Harvard Graduate student working on her doctoral dissertation.Her advisor, Manning Chilton, suggests that she find a unique and undiscovered primary source to focus her research on.Unfortunately for Connie and her academic progress, not a lot of work is getting done on the dissertation, not since Connie’s earthly and eccentric mother Grace [...]
I give this novel my highest personal rating: it performs the extremely difficult task of making Cicero, a rather stuffy icon for 2 millennia, as accessible and as politically understandable as the national news in your local paper and to paint his turbulent times in a way anyone can identify with and understand.It is simply [...]
If you can’t get Newton and Galileo to solve your scientific problems, who do you turn to?Well the English government turned to everyone, hoping that some budding scientist could figure out the problem of calculating Longitude at sea.They even offered a huge reward.Why was it important?Without precise longitude, there was no way to steer a [...]
In 1996, as rare book expert Dr. Hanna Heath examines the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated Hebrew manuscript from 15th century Spain, she carefully removes a series of artifacts that, under laboratory examination, will offer insight into the remarkable journey of this unusual text. Having survived the Serb-Bosnian war, the haggadah yields precious clues that allow [...]
It is perhaps simplistic to declare that “V for Vendetta” is Alan Moore’s version of George Orwell’s “1984.”Orwell came up with his “prophetic” title by reversing the last two digits of the year in which he wrote his book.Moore began his story in 1982, picturing a future that was around the corner and setting his [...]
“The Little Stranger” marks a departure for novelist Sarah Waters, who has also written works like “Affinity” and “Tipping the Velvet” which had lesbian themes in them. “The Little Stranger” does not have such themes, instead it is a well-constructed, beautifully-written Gothic tale that focuses on a crumbling great house in the English countryside. It [...]