Bill Clinton’s favorite book is said to be The Meditations of the second-century A.D. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a plumpish volume of ethical jottings in crabbed Greek, disdained, apparently, by most early American readers as too idiosyncratic and obscure (one notable exception was the first Virginian, Captain John Smith). But it does not appear that...
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Ruritanian Revenge and Reality
Land of Albania! Let me bend mine eyes On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men! —Byron, Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage ALBANIAN ANARCHY! BALKAN BLOODBATH! Typical banners to newspaper stories of the riots and virtual civil war that gripped “Europe’s most bizarre country” during 1997, culminating in the forced resignation of Sali...
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Crime, Punishment, and Civility
In 1777, upon the execution of the preacher Dr. William Dodd, Samuel Johnson produced one of his most memorable aphorisms: “Depend upon it. Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Six years later, he deplored the abolition of public executions at Tyburn, echoing St....