The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “history”

The Paris Review Origin Story and Their Secret to the Art of the Interview
The Paris Review Origin Story and Their Secret to the Art of the Interview

“Authors are sometimes like tomcats: they distrust all the other toms, but they are kind to kittens.”

read article

How to Create the Perfect Wife
How to Create the Perfect Wife

How an 18th-century bachelor enlisted Rousseau’s teachings in Frankensteining his better-ever half.

read article

Nabokov and Homeland Security: How Russia’s Most Revered Literary Émigré Became an American
Nabokov and Homeland Security: How Russia’s Most Revered Literary Émigré Became an American

How a broken lock, a suitcase of dead butterflies, and a pair of boxing gloves became the backdrop of the making of a legend.

read article

Legendary Composer Leonard Bernstein on the Future of Music, Harvard 1973
Legendary Composer Leonard Bernstein on the Future of Music, Harvard 1973

“A great new era of eclecticism is at hand.”

read article

Willa Cather’s Only Surviving Letter to Her Partner, Edith Lewis
Willa Cather’s Only Surviving Letter to Her Partner, Edith Lewis

“I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and unfailing appearances and exits, are something more than mathematics and horrible temperatures.”

read article

How Cooking Civilized Us: Michael Pollan on Food as Social Glue and Anti-Corporate Activism
How Cooking Civilized Us: Michael Pollan on Food as Social Glue and Anti-Corporate Activism

What the four elements have to do with corporate exploitation and the story arc of culinary craft.

read article

Meet Marty Cooper, Inventor of the Cell Phone
Meet Marty Cooper, Inventor of the Cell Phone

“If you try to build a device that does all things for all people, it won’t do any of them very well.”

read article

Frida Kahlo’s Passionate Hand-Written Love Letters to Diego Rivera
Frida Kahlo’s Passionate Hand-Written Love Letters to Diego Rivera

“Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.”

read article

The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook: A Rare 1961 Treasure Trove of Unusual Recipes and Creative Wit
The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook: A Rare 1961 Treasure Trove of Unusual Recipes and Creative Wit

“Permit two egg yolks to recline.”

read article

How Attractive Are You To The Opposite Sex? Esquire’s 1949 Questionnaire
How Attractive Are You To The Opposite Sex? Esquire’s 1949 Questionnaire

“Almost any man can stand almost any amount of flattery.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)