The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “history”

How Aubrey Beardsley’s Visionary Illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” Subverted Victorian Gender Norms and Revolutionized the Graphic Arts
How Aubrey Beardsley’s Visionary Illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” Subverted Victorian Gender Norms and Revolutionized the Graphic Arts

“He is drawing not persons but personages; he is dramatizing not the relationships between personalities but the pure, geometric essence of relationship.”

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Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”
Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”

“Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…”

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The Best Science Books of 2015
The Best Science Books of 2015

From Earth’s largest-hearted creature to the interconnectedness of the universe, by way of Einstein and artificial intelligence.

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Alexander von Humboldt and the Invention of Nature: How One of the Last True Polymaths Pioneered the Cosmos of Connections
Alexander von Humboldt and the Invention of Nature: How One of the Last True Polymaths Pioneered the Cosmos of Connections

“In this great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation.”

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Adam Gopnik on Darwin’s Brilliant Strategy for Preempting Criticism and the True Mark of Genius
Adam Gopnik on Darwin’s Brilliant Strategy for Preempting Criticism and the True Mark of Genius

“In the back-and-forth of a self-made contest, both sides have a shot.”

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Galileo on Why We Read and How Books Give Us Superhuman Powers
Galileo on Why We Read and How Books Give Us Superhuman Powers

“What sublimity of mind was his who dreamed of finding means to communicate his deepest thoughts to any other person, though distant by mighty intervals of place and time!”

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A Cultural History of Santa: Margaret Mead’s Fictional Interview with the Jolly Gift-Giver Celebrating Generosity and the Universal Spirit of Giving
A Cultural History of Santa: Margaret Mead’s Fictional Interview with the Jolly Gift-Giver Celebrating Generosity and the Universal Spirit of Giving

“Giving is itself a kind of thank offering.”

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The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time
The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time

How the debris of a landmark disagreement became the foundation of our present ideas about the fabric of existence.

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Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: Harvard Physicist Lisa Randall on the Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: Harvard Physicist Lisa Randall on the Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe

A thrilling cosmological detective story of how the universe evolved and what made our very existence possible.

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Gustave Doré’s Hauntingly Beautiful Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno
Gustave Doré’s Hauntingly Beautiful Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno

“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.”

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