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“A book,” a 20-year-old Franz Kafka wrote to his friend Oskar Pollack in 1904, “must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” It is a quintessential Kafka image. I see an ice-axe, the sharpened point of its curved metal head shattering a vast plane of ice into hairline…

On 28 April 1925, the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts opened in Paris. It was a landmark event in the evolution of art, architecture and design, and aroused great interest both for the works on display and for their impact.

It’s a straightforward part of the Easter story: The Roman governor Pontius Pilate had Jesus of Nazareth killed by his soldiers. He imposed a sentence that Roman judges often inflicted on social subversives – crucifixion.

In the 11th century in Cairo, the foundations for modern science were laid through the detention of an innocent man.

In today’s volatile world, where wars can be fought over territory, commerce can be abruptly subjected to tariffs, and friendly nations can turn hostile after a single election, political leadership is more consequential than ever. So, one must ask, what makes a leader effective, and how should we choose who…

In our guides to the classics, experts explain key literary works.

America’s public lands, from its majestic national parks to its vast national forests, are at the heart of the country’s identity.

To a nonmathematician, having the letter “i” represent a number that does not quite exist and is “imaginary” can be hard to wrap your head around. If you open your mind to this way of thinking, however, a whole new world becomes possible.

If the joy of seeing butterflies seems increasingly rare these days, it isn’t your imagination.