Motherhood Is Always An Act Of Courage.

It Has Always Been Preferable To Attribute A Woman's Success To Her Beauty Rather Than To Her Brains, To Reduce Her To The Sum Of Her Sex Life.

I Checked To See If There’d Been A Really Good Book Published In The Last Few Decades. Then I Started With What Cleopatra Would Have Read, Asking Myself, “what Can We Know About Her Education?” It Turns Out To Be A Very Great Deal, And Bizarrely, No One Had Written About That Before.

I'm A Sucker For Lost Worlds. I Was Nostalgic Even As A Child. I Was Happiest In My Hometown Library In Adams, Mass., Where Nothing Seemed To Change.

Ancient History Is Oddly Short On Incorrect Omens.

A Rich, Multi-dimensional Tour Of Naples, Most Brilliant, Battered, And Bewildering Of Cities, Here Fixed To The Page With Wit And élan. Splendid.