In February, I was browsing the shelves of our local secondhand bookstore, looking for birthday gifts for two grandchildren, when I came across Hermann Hagedorn’s “The Book of Courage.” This 90-year-old collection of biographies for young people salutes luminaries as diverse as Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, David Livingstone, Mahatma Gandhi, and Queen Elizabeth I. Here,…
A Journey Into the World of Tea
“Tea tempers the spirits and harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, lightens or refreshes the body, and clears the perceptive faculties.” —Lu Yu, “The Classic of Tea” Tea has long been one of the most popular drinks in the world. According to World Tea News, tea ranks second…
Pop Culture Historian Preserves LA’s Past While Looking to the Future
Alison Martino calls herself a “DeLorean of the internet”—comparing herself to the iconic modern car that serves as a time machine in the movie “Back to the Future.” The daughter of show business royalty, Martino has made it her life’s mission to preserve the pop culture history of Southern California by creating Vintage Los Angeles,…
US Prepares for One of the Most Unusual Inaugurations in History
WASHINGTON—President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as president on Jan. 20 amid unparalleled security measures and the pandemic lockdown, making it one of the most untraditional inaugurations in the U.S. history. Like many predecessors, Biden is going to be sworn in on the steps of the Capitol Hill. But the traditional parade down the…
Pompeii Is Famous for Its Ruins and Bodies, but What About Its Wine?
Pompeii is famed for plaster-cast bodies, ruins, frescoes, and the rare snapshot it provides of a rather typical ancient Roman city. But less famous is its evidence of viticulture. Wild grapevines probably existed across peninsular Italy since prehistory, but it is likely the Etruscans and colonizing Greeks promoted wine-making with domesticated grapes as early as…
Deception and Suppression: A Year of Beijing’s Virus Coverup
News analysis Around this time last year, Chinese authorities acknowledged that an “unknown” form of pneumonia was spreading in the city of Wuhan. But it was already too late. What we now know as COVID-19 had already broken out across the city and possibly beyond. In the months that followed, authorities bungled prevention measures and…
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