From the category archives:

Book of the Week

Meet Van Gogh’s Doctor

By Sheramy Bundrick
Early the morning of 24 December 1888, a severely wounded man was brought to the Hôtel-Dieu of Arles for treatment. On duty: Félix Rey (1867–1932), a young intern completing his thesis from the University of Montpellier. The patient: Vincent van Gogh, who the night before had sliced part of his left [...]

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Book of the Week: Dr. Olaf von Schuler’s Brain

Is it possible to have found a fiction writer who shares such wonder at early medicine’s marvels? Does Kirsten Menger-Andersen earn an honorary place among medical historians for translating our odd truths about medical beliefs and practices into breath-taking and respectful prose? Answer: YES.
Doctor Olaf von Schuler’s Brain is simply gorgeous. [...]

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Book of the Week: Keepers of the Keys of Heaven

By Holly Tucker
Here is an assignment that would send deep panic through my writerly self: Please write, in 500 pages or less, a history of Popes from the beginning to the present day.
Roger Collins has risen to the task magnificently! Written with clarity and verve, Keeps of the Keys of Heaven: A History [...]

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Book of the Week: Wedlock

By Holly Tucker
This week’s Book of the Week is Wendy Moore’s WEDLOCK: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore.
I have to concur with the praise it received in a recent UK review: “This splendid book, well researched and richly detailed, is as [...]

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Book of the Week: The Miracles of Prato

By Holly Tucker
What would happen if a painter-monk fell in love with a young novitiate? And what happens when an art historian pairs up with a novelist? Answer–The Miracles of Prato: A Novel.
The page-turning novel opens with a birth, a scandal–and then leads the reader into the dark corners of convent life during the Renaissance. [...]

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Book of the Week: Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities

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By Holly Tucker
I make before you now an earnest confession: I am a not a math genius.
Thanks to graduate training, I feel pretty darn confident when it comes to historical research and critical theory. But math, well, let’s just say that I’d never be able to play the Matt Damon character in Good Will [...]

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Book of the Week: The Way of Herodotus

If you couldn’t tell, I am passionate about early history. Early history means that marvelous moment between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. 16th to 18th centuries. It’s what we academic types usually call “the early-modern.”
The early-modern era had something of a love-loathing relationship with Antiquity. The recovery of classical texts by [...]

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