Giacomo Puccini, the composer of “La Bohème,” “Tosca” and “Madama Butterfly,” has been called the world’s most popular songwriter, and with good reason.

Erskine Childers went from being the John le Carré of his day to a convicted war criminal and nationalist martyr.

The absolute refusal to accept handed-down truths—whether in politics, science, religion or art—was a constant in Kurt Vonnegut’s life and work.

Charles Darwin’s teaching has been misappropriated by generations of intellectually dubious adherents.

Fascism has proved sufficiently elastic to be used as a term of abuse across the political spectrum.

'The root of Spiritism...is the diseased moral condition of the age,' one Catholic author wrote.

Melville, who was born 200 years ago this August, was consumed with the issue of humanity’s capacity for good or evil.

The treaty’s offhand attitude toward the non-European world stirred up resentments that lingered for decades.

Lawrence’s triumphant arrival in Damascus in 1918 might be said to have been the spark that ultimately ignited a powder keg of factional rivalries and distrust.

Though ‘lapsed,’ the prolific author was obsessed with the church.