The president of the United States wasn’t crazy back when I first met him, in the early 80s. Craven, tacky, self-regarding—yes, he had all of those enduring attributes. ...

They used to ask people who had suffered a bad knock to the head a number of questions. After asking you to recall your own name, they usually asked for the name of the prime...

Many moons ago in Tibet, the Second Buddha transformed a fierce nyen (a malevolent mountain demon) into a neri (the holiest protective warrior god) called Khawa Karpo, who took up residence in the sacred mountain...

Merce Cunningham was one of the three most influential choreographers of the 20th century. (The other two were George Balanchine and Martha Graham.) He choreographed nearly 200 works of modern dance between 1944 and his...

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian, has been diplomatic this week (“Nobody pushed me”) about being pressured by Donald Trump to dig up dirt on his Democratic opponent. In the pulled-together transcript of the...

The Whitney, M.I.T., the Museum of Natural History, Sloan Kettering, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Shed at Hudson Yards—these are just a few of the places under fire for their financial...

When the artist Maurizio Cattelan heard that his solid-gold toilet, valued by some at nearly $6 million, had been ripped from the floor and stolen from the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill, he reacted...

Around Wall Street, smart people have learned two things in the last decade. One, pray you never get a letter from Jesse Cohn. Two, you ignore Cohn at your own peril. For those of you...

On June 3, 1992, presidential aspirant Bill Clinton, wearing cool-daddy shades and a groovy tie and wielding a mighty sax, opened The Arsenio Hall Show with a squawky version of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”—it drove...

Welcome, everybody, to the first newsletter from the Lady Hale Fan Club, established just now after the landmark case, Lady Hale v Those Populists Who Say It’s All Just a Plot to Stop Brexit (When...

In 1972, Andy Warhol added a series of paintings of Chairman Mao to his ever growing gallery of icons, and his irreverent blend of mythology and mass marketing caught a big political shift. (President Nixon...

In a shallow windowed storefront in London’s Piccadilly Circus underground station, a whirl of clothes are flying in a continuous loop behind a dressing screen, as if an unseen cartoon character were rampaging through a...

Do you think you know George Stubbs? You have probably seen his horses parading like proud supermodels around the drawing rooms of England’s grandest homes. This 18th-century painter, with a passion for anatomy and an...

Thank goodness that not every over-the-knee boot reminds us of Julia Roberts’s not-for-everyone attire ...

In our eternal quest to perfect the art of travel, we’ve developed a dependency on Paravel’s packing cubes. ...

You can try to avoid fall’s ubiquitous mini-bag trend, but why? At first glance, Fendi’s Nano Baguette ...

At the recent New York Fashion Week, Matthew Adams Dolan emerged as the most discussed ...

If you’re still rightly charmed by the look of Catherine Deneuve’s Séverine Serizy in Belle de Jour ...

Intersection. The word is a perfect fit for JR, the French-born photographer who started out as a teenage graffiti artist, switched to a camera, began pasting large (and largely illegal) photographs on walls all over...

’Tis little I — could care for Pearls —Who own the ample sea —Or Brooches — when the Emperor —With Rubies — pelteth me —Or Gold — who am the Prince of Mines —Or Diamonds...

I fell into a dream when I began Jeanette Winterson’s 11th novel, Frankissstein: A Love Story. This was in large part due to its lush and evocative descriptions of young Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s life in...

To review certain books seems like an impertinence. This is one of them. It speaks for itself with such clarity, certainty and wisdom that only one thing needs to be said: read it. And then...

“There is a bland vacation quality to most Maine literature,” Elizabeth Hardwick wrote in 1971. Back then, such a pronouncement might have lead to a bar fight in Portland, but today the critic would just...

Who doesn’t delight in juicy tales of disruption among the ranks of disruptive technologies (see John Carreyrou on Theranos or Nick Bilton on Twitter)? In Isaac’s deeply detailed account, Uber turns out to be the...

The luxury designer launched his eponymous fashion house in 2008, and since then his star has only risen. Altuzarra is now a judge on Amazon Prime’s Making the Cut, and his pieces have become highly...

I love writing about brilliant, risk-taking, complicated women, and Carrie Fisher had those qualities—plus bracing honesty—in profusion. Few celebrities have confessed with as much witty, ferocious candor their self-acknowledged imperfections and serious challenges—in her case:...

While it’s strange to think of women such as Ivanka Trump, Lara Trump, and Meghan Markle slumming it after giving birth, one only needs to look at the postpartum practices across Asian countries to start...

If you’ve seen the documentary Hearts of Darkness, you know what a horror show the filming of ...

In 1972, the motorcycling world was stunned when Paul Smart and Bruno Spaggiari took first and second ...

Bertha González Nieves is the co-founder of Casa Dragones tequila. In her native Mexico, she loves Tetetlán. ...

The rich, Santa Barbara, California, kids competing in a high-school election are as calculating and cutthroat as Tracy Flick in the 1999 ...

When a scandal is truly shocking, people can’t hear enough about it.

Rachelle Macpherson, an air mail Editor at Large and the founder of Lingua Franca, is a chronic collaborator ...

The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra has blossomed much like its home city, which has evolved from a key port during the Opium Wars to dazzling colonial outpost, to besieged wartime center, to a megalopolis of 24...

Dear Richard,I’m heading to Shanghai for a work conference. You know the drill: serious wonks, forgettable hotel, rubber-duck dinners. If I extend my trip a few days, how can I best experience the city—and a...

Few letters survive from the death camps built by the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Here is an almost unreadably poignant short note, from the Czech prisoner Vilma Grünwald to her...

Positive reviews on Airbnb have never mattered more. Downton Abbey—well, Highclere Castle, technically—has just manifested on the site, offering a one-night-only stay for well-ranked guests.Yes, that is Lady Carnarvon’s smiling face in that cheerful little...

As a kid growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, fashion designer Thom Browne was a state-champion swimmer. After college, he tried his hand at acting in Los Angeles, then moved to New York to work in...

When Renée Zellweger asked me to duet with her on “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the new Judy Garland biopic she is starring in, she joked that she had already been singing along...