History

Calling Muhammad Ali a fighter is like calling the Pope a priest – it does nothing to recognize the man's true significance.

As Mr. Obama recognized the Japanese losses at Hiroshima and the event that caused them, there is a resonance for Americans who are remembering their own losses this Memorial Day weekend.

The National Park Service oversees not just vast spaces and natural wonders, but historic sites like Alexander Hamilton's home in New York City.

The conceptualization was that the gardens were echoes of their canvas counterparts; they were living paintings.

Is mainstream media news investigative journalism or entertainment? Edward R. Murrow would have a definitive answer, expressed in the new play bearing his name in NYC.

'I see it as horticultural theater. The way exhibitions are, there is tremendous complexity. It’s like when the curtain goes up the set changes.'

That was the standard practice of the explorers in the Victorian period: 'I paid you thousands of dollars to go far off into the forests of India to bring me back this plant. I want this plant.'

It is ironic but somehow fitting that St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, synonymous with all things Irish, when in fact he wasn’t even Irish. Patrick was born around A.D. 390 in Roman Britain to a wealthy family and led a life of casual privilege until he was kidnapped by raiders at the age of 16 and spirited away to Ireland, where he spent more than six windswept, chilly years as a slave tending sheep in the vicinity of Killala.

"Orchidelirium" is a bedazzling, live horticultural spectacular, a sterling exhibition to celebrate the NYBG's 125th Anniversary.

Whether the reader is interested in the lives of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Heidegger, or in search of fulfillment of one’s own enlightenment, Sarah Bakewell’s "At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails" account of the Existential movement is both fascinating and relevant.