Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. Didion's career began in the 1950…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philol…
Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a r…
John Julius Norwich was an English historian, writer, and broadcaster known for his engaging books on European history and culture. The son of diplomat and politician Duff Cooper and socialite Lady D…
Cormac McCarthy was a highly acclaimed American novelist and screenwriter celebrated for his distinctive literary style, philosophical depth, and exploration of violence, morality, and the human condi…
H.W. Brands is an acclaimed American historian and author of over thirty books on U.S. history, including Pulitzer Prize finalists The First American and Traitor to His Class. He holds the Jack S. Bla…
Edward S. Herman was an economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. He was Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton …
Ron Chernow was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating with honors from Yale College and Cambridge University with degrees in English Literature, he began a prolific career as a freelanc…
Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Pari…
Romanian-born historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, professor at the University of Chicago, and one of the pre-eminent interpreters of world religion in the last century. Eliade was an i…
The Prince, book of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian political theorist, in 1513 describes an indifferent ruler to moral considerations with determination to achieve and to maintain power.
French essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He reje…
Ian Kershaw is an English historian, noted for his biographies of Adolf Hitler. He studied at Liverpool (BA) and Oxford (D. Phil). He was a lecturer first in medieval, then in modern, history at the U…
Lotte Henriette Eisner was born in Berlin as a daughter of a Jewish merchant and his wife. After studies in Berlin and Munich, from 1927 she worked as a theater and film critic for German newspapers. …
Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 an…
Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews.
Julius Evola, born Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esoteric scholar. Born in Rome to a Sicilian family (often claimed to be landed gentry, giving Julius the title of Baron, …
Robert Owen Paxton is an American political scientist and historian specializing in Vichy France, fascism, and Europe during the World War II era. After attending secondary school in New England, he r…
Ernst Jünger was a decorated German soldier and author who became famous for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel. The son of a successful businessman and chemist, Jünger rebelled against an affluent…
A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scie…
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremos…
S.C. “Sam” Gwynne is the author of two acclaimed books on American history: Empire of the Summer Moon, which spent 82 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Pr…