“Have you been watching Victoria on PBS? Swoon. I hear The Crown on Netflix is fabulous too,” my friend Sara Bhatia emailed recently. I’ve heard the same! Today, Elizabeth Colton Walls regales us with the life and times of Queen Victoria – prompted…
Nonfiction
Kristen Green set out to understand what happened in the place she grew up – Prince Edward County, Virginia – between 1959 and 1964, when the county closed every single one of its public schools instead of integrating under court order. ‘Something Must Be…
If you step inside the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, you’ll want to stay for a while. Housed in one of the seven original campus residences – and beautifully refurbished – the Center exudes…
The year is 1954. A young man stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama, writes a letter to his sweetheart back home in Tennessee. He will soon be deployed to Korea, the 38th Parallel. Join me today for a true story with a beautiful ending……
Why do we go to the Symphony, the Ballet, the theater or any other arts performance or institution? The National Endowment for the Arts asked. “I expected to hear that it is because someone loves a particular form of art,…
At nine months old, my friend Sara Bhatia’s son Zander was sampling a variety of curries and other exotic dishes. My nine-month-old daughter, Ruth, on the other hand, was sampling the foods Gerber put in a jar. Fast forward a few…
The best novels tend to acknowledge and explore how complicated life can be. Love that, appreciate that! But sometimes you’re in the mood for something gentler. For a beautifully simple vision of the good life and how to live it, light a…
I ran into Monica McDougall at a party recently. “How are you? How are the kids?” I asked, expecting an enthusiastic response. “Normal,” she replied, with her lovely wry smile, a smile that conveyed the vagaries, hassles, worries, and aggravations of family…
I recently finished reading The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher’s account of what went on behind the scenes during the filming of Star Wars. It broke my heart for her – for the girl she was at age 19, in love…