Unfortunately, information about the author is unknown to us. But you can add it. Read full biography of Stacy Schiff →
Nonfiction writers are the packhorses of literature. We're meant to carry the story. If we can make it up and down the mountain by a reliable if... →
Reality does not easily give up meaning; it's the biographer's job to clobber it into submission. You're meant not only to tame it but to... →
We don't know how Cleopatra spent her days, but we do know how other Hellenistic monarchs spent their days. There has been a great amount of... →
My next book is on the Salem witch trials. As a small-town Massachusetts girl, this makes me very happy. So does the reunion with documents!
I wouldn't dare to speculate as to Cleopatra's falling in love. Her relationships are too convenient for that.
An interesting thing about book groups, it seems to me, is that there is no correlation between a brilliant book and a brilliant discussion. The... →
From every ancient source, we have testimony to Cleopatra's irresistible charm, as Plutarch has it, to her ability to speak many languages... →
You have to scuba dive in the Alexandrian harbor if you want to see what remains of the lighthouse of Cleopatra's day, and the water in the... →
Cleopatra had one great advantage. She lived at a time when female sovereigns were not anomalies. And when women enjoyed rights they would not again... →
What we know about Cleopatra's looks is based purely on her coin portraits. Engraving was imperfect, and that when you are a ruler and you ask... →
In an ideal world, the perfect biographical subject would have been the star of his penmanship class at grade school - and would thereafter write an... →
The desk thing is a problem for me. The ideal one would be vast and perfectly clear. Yet the bane of the biographical existence is paper; if... →
The interesting thing about Cleopatra is that she is such a shape-shifter. I mean through history we've all molded her to our times and our... →
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