On getting the reader's attention The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and they can't know…
Washington asks Congress for help Commander-in-Chief George Washington to John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress: New York July the 11th 1776 As I am truly sensible the time of Congress…
Back in the 1870s, German archeologists began extensive excavations at Pergamon, an ancient Greek city whose ruins lie in modern Turkey, near the Aegean Sea. The museum built to house the…
In several violent Acts and interludes, with important and incendiary dialogue in (of course) red. Setting: A world before the Industrial Revolution and capitalism, with countries ruled by kings and assorted…
Seeing reliefs of trophies at the Pergamon exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art reminded me that I'd written an essay on trophies back in 2007. While writing an essay…
By 1774, 45-year-old Reverend Samuel Seabury (1729-1796) was a veteran of verbal combat. Assigned to a church in New Jersey from 1754 to 1757, he became embroiled in the debate over…
February 2016 Gore Vidal, Burr: A Novel. Read it for the second in my series of posts on Hamilton: An American Musical. Vidal is a great storyteller, and who tells your story really…
New York is the greatest city in the world: no argument from me about that. But greatness has to start somewhere ... Here's the Dutch settlement at the southern end of…
Sculpting the Sherman Monument Augustus Saint Gaudens, recognized since his Farragut, 1880, as one of America's most skilled and innovative sculptors, was already ill in 1891, when he accepted the commission for an equestrian…
On the goal of advertising Advertising says to people, “Here’s what we've got. Here’s what it will do for you. Here’s how to get it.” —Leo Burnett So Kennedy said to…