“Hereditary states are much less difficult to hold than new states. If such a ruler is ordinarily diligent and competent his government will always be secure.” Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532) ...

Anyway, I think, she’s dead, and though I loved her, I now have both the time and freedom to write my essay on Montaigne . . .” With these startling words, Mark Haber launches his tragicomic third ...

At some stage in writing about the essay, it is necessary to make references to Montaigne and Bacon, Orwell and Woolf, and from closer to our times Didion and Solnit. OK, so that’s done.

I discovered Montaigne when I was at Longview High School ... musing “attempts” or essays, that ranged over Latin literature and showed close observation of the idiosyncrasies of people ...

If you don’t want to sound academic, don’t subtitle an essay ‘On the Dialectics of Eschatology in Stifter and Handke’ A sense of Heimat, or homeland, is also key — and indisputably ...

Americans once dreamed of a country that did not care about global greatness or glory. It was within our reach if we had been wise enough to grasp and hold it.

Also see the section on social media below. When I was a philosophy prof (1982-2003), I specialized in Kant and German idealism; the history of modern European philosophy, roughly from Montaigne to ...