Thepsmiths

Aztecs: An Interpretation, Inga Clendinnen (Cambridge University Press, 1991).When Hernán Cortés landed in the New World, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was one of the greatest cities anywhere on earth. It had more than twice the population of Seville,

Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, Sherri Duskey Rinker (illus. Tom Lichtenheld; Chronicle Books, 2011). There comes a time in the life of every young hominin when it can toddle on its own two feet beyond adult reach and begin to interact unsupervis

We've already established that I usually don't read the comments on these posts, because I am a weak and fallible human and thus seek to avoid "engagement" at all costs. But some of you email me, and sometimes your emails contain book recommendations, and

1939: The Lost World of the Fair, David Gelernter (Avon, 1996).During one of our recent bouts of "everyone is home sick and Mom is increasingly grumpy about it," we watched Disney's 1940 classic Fantasia. It was just as good as I remembered (I consider my

Anabasis, Xenophon (trans. Shane Brennan, Pantheon, 2021).If you hang out much with finance bros (or "capital allocators" as they now call themselves),1 you may chance to hear somebody described as an "operator." What is this strange species? What is this