I was on a beach in Brazil two Christmases ago when I heard that Anne Rice had died suddenly of a stroke. The news had been posted on her son, the novelist Christopher Rice’s, Facebook page. I was shocked, though…

I love Thanksgiving. It’s the best American holiday — besting July 4, if only because the celebrations don’t scare the dog. Usually. Thanksgiving is universal. No matter the religion or creed, all people can express gratitude for their blessings. It…

In the not-so-distant past, conservative entertainment options were usually inflicted by the very serious plague of cringe. Think of the overt, shove-down-your-throat messaging that characterized somewhat successful films like God is Not Dead, making them difficult to watch for those…

Federico Fellini is often lauded for the highly imaginative quality of his films. Indeed, so powerful is the association of the Italian director with the surreal and the fantastic that his last name has been incorporated into the English language…

At her death on April 8, 2013, she was the Right Honorable Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, LG, OM, DStJ, PC, FRS, HonFRSC, but at her birth on Oct. 13, 1925 — 98 years ago today — she…

I never met Tom Wolfe, even though we shared friends and editors and agents and both lived for a long time on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I remember seeing him once, on a fine summer’s day, stepping out…

A beggar’s book outworths a noble’s blood. —Henry VIII, Act I, Scene I Above the piano in our living room hangs a painting by the French neo-impressionist Jan Bonal. It is a pointillist Parisian street scene, executed much in the…

On Juneteenth, I decided to celebrate by visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met currently has a variety of fascinating exhibits on display, including the Afrocentric Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, The African Origin of…

The latest fad is to travel to dangerous destinations. That is, to die. Perhaps there are people who are de facto not so far removed from the postulates of politicians who advocate euthanasia. The trend is not to travel, or…

I It is Aug. 13, 1944, and the streets of Warsaw are clogged with barricades and mounds of rubble, burn-out vehicles and fallen streetlamps, bent iron pipes and tangled electrical cables, all interspersed with spent cartridges and dead bodies. An…