Novel reading was once regarded as an idle occupation, just as Internet use is now.

Where do the terms hawks and doves come from? The symbolic connections are ancient, but the War of 1812 put them in the political lexicon.

Langston Hughes' poetry was influenced by the drag scene in 1920s Harlem.

For centuries, the Caucasus was to the Russian Empire what the Middle East was to the British and French: a savage land to be dominated and a romanticized Other against which Russia could define its own “European” identity.

In 1993, divers discovered a shipwreck from the Hellenistic period off the coast of Turkey. It held marble columns from the Temple of Apollo.

When tragedies strike, it is through photographs, rather than think pieces and reportage that the reader can see the sheer scale of the problem.

What constitutes ‘correct’ grammar in English seems to have a cyclical life, aided and abetted by new generations of enthusiastic grammarians.

The archive of Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, will go to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

Where did the notion of teaching people how to spend their free time come from, and why did it disappear?

2014 marks the 50th anniversary of Frank O’Hara’s groundbreaking book Lunch Poems.