In 1957, the Italian government commissioned Salvador DalĆ to create 100 watercolors to illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy, to coincide with the 700th ...
Nostalgic for his student days, Pope Benedict XVI has elected to pass out of history much as he stepped into it: blinking blindly at all the bright lights, never quite certain of how he got there, nor what he was supposed to do with the power he possessed.
Leave it to the venerable Economist to continue to scoop the Internet through sheer ingenuity. Who but The Economist would run a cover story entitled "A Rough Guide to Hell," in its year-end double issue?
Inferno, Dan Brown's new book about Dante, is coming out on May 14, 2013 from Doubleday in the U.S., and Transworld Publishers in the UK (a division o...
Great literature, because it asks big questions and communicates big ideas, stays relevant, even if it is very old. You will be richer, wiser, and smarter if you make classic literature a regular part of your life.
Here are five literary giants whose hearts were impaled by Cupid's arrow in the most brutal way. Rather than wallow in self-pity, these tortured scribes picked themselves up and stabbed Cupid right back -- with their pens.
Angelo Musco's childhood story could arguably be a terrifying fairy tale. His mother gave birth to four children before him, each one bigger than the...
Dear Pastor Paul, When I was eight I was taught two things in the same week. The first was that accepting Jesus was the only path to heaven; and the second was that there were a billion people in China who had never heard the name Jesus.
Is it really possible that some people don't know who Dante is, or, more shockingly, Shakespeare? According to bookstore employees, there are such peo...
When you're too lazy to read an entire book ... and even lazier still not to read the CliffNotes ... then you can turn to this hilarious, shabbily ani...
The line between auction houses and art galleries keeps blurring. It is no longer unusual for Sotheby's and Christie's to take over entire galleries. ...
John Kerry should re-read his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, eloquently urging a withdrawal of United States forces from Vietnam, as he contemplates his duty towards Afghanistan.
I took on this project with great trepidation because so many great artists have already interpreted this important work.
Never mind, I took advantag...
Not long ago, I posted a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel on my Facebook page. This isn't an online slide show or video guide through a Rome museum ...
Lisa Miller, the Religion editor of Newsweek, spoke to Stephen Colbert last night about her new book, "Heaven," which explores the history of Heaven, ...
Today I'll be talking with Kim Paffenroth, a philosophical professor of religious studies at Iona College who is fascinated with - of all things - zom...
In imagining this world, who would have guessed mountains and eyes and tuna fish and tables and fossils and crockpots and libraries and clouds? The task of envisioning a radically different world is doomed before it begins. Heaven is, quite literally, unimaginable.
It's more than a little surprising to see a new crop of console games trading in the old standards (football, hookers, zombies, guns) for a far older standard: renaissance art and literary classics.
Abandon all hope ye who enter the secret code to Level 9. The first part of Dante Alighieri's pre-Renaissance masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, has been...
Do you like books? The covers, pages, signatures, glue-ings, and sew-ings that have been around from Dante's time to Dickinson's? Or do you like readings?
In 1971, James Dickey wrote a letter listing the top ten living American poets. Slotted in third place behind Ezra Pound and W.H. Auden was...James D...