Robert Kennedy

I'm more familiar with the first edition than the third, and it always struck me as odd that Mary Shelley thought that the North Pole was a place that one could sail to in a wooden ship....

The slitters (round, rolling blades like a pizza cutter, minus the serration) on a newspaper web press can make a newsprint roll come out as either a broadsheet or a tabloid, depending on the...

Elizabeth was less a character than a plot device. He spends all but a few days of his adult life avoiding her, in his lab, but he writes her many passionate love letters. Women aren't really a...

It's worth noting that Eliza did not, in fact, receive an education of any real substance, but was taught the surface mannerisms an educated woman of the age might affect. Although she was taught...

In his poem "If," Kipling explains manly virtues in the manner a father might to a son, and chief among those virtues is perseverance: "If you can wait and not be tired by waiting" advises the...

The central theme is loss, or grief. The Captain lies dead after bringing his ship into port after a dangerous journey; he succeeded at his most dangerous task, his life was lost, and his crew...

Oscar Wilde was an important dramatic and literary figure of his age, and many of his works, like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome, dealt with weighty themes. The Importance of Being Earnest...

America had a mythical quality to Europeans of the early 18th Century, especially the ones who had never been there. It was a place where a penniless Irishman could go and make his fortune in the...

Jamie Kincaid is Claudia's younger brother. She brings him along on her plan to run away and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She brings him along because he shares her sense of adventure....

Settlers (primarily from Tennessee and other Southern US states) considered the land available for the taking. A significant number of Mexicans who had been there for generations (Los Tejanos) were...

Spices, first encountered by Europeans during the Crusades, profoundly affected European cuisines. Prior to soldiers returning home from the Crusades with spices, European foods were bland and...

Alphonse indulged Victor to a degree we might find odd, but within the context of a wealthy 18th Century European family this behavior might have been normal. One example: The Frankensteins adopted...

Colonel Pickering isn't a character so much as a narrative device. His presense appears to challenge Higgins' ideas, but he's actually just a sounding board, an opportunity for Higgins to say what...

I think it's fair to say that she had fewer self-doubts as a little girl in the militantly repressive Iran than she had in the unstructured, unrestrained West. It's tempting to say that one thing...

Lord Byron, an English poet of the early 19th Century, was a prominent figure within the Romantic literary movement. His two best-known poems were Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He was as...

You might want to consider what function the gods and heroes of Greek myth fulfilled to their Hellenic contemporaries, and what the corresponding equivalent would be to a modern audience. Were they...