"Les Fleurs du Mal" de Charles Baudelaire est un roman passionnant qui explore les thèmes de l'amour, de la passion et de la folie. Le livre raconte l'histoire de Julien Sorel, un jeune homme ambitieux et passionné qui se lance dans une quête éperdue pour réaliser ses rêves et conquérir l'amour de la belle Madame de Rênal. Mais alors qu'il se rapproche de son but, il est confronté à des obstacles impitoyables, notamment les rivalités et...

"On February 25, 1963, Columbia Records released The Barbra Streisand Album. The first song was "Cry Me a River," and with that a star was born. Barbra Joan Streisand had a zany personality backed by a talent that Stephen Sondheim once described as "one of the two or three best voices in the world of singing songs," adding "It's not just her voice but her intensity, her passion and control." Harold Arlen, another of her favorite composers, commented,...

"Ayn Rand's complicated notoriety as popular writer, leader of a political and philosophical cult, reviled intellectual, and ostentatious public figure followed her beyond her death in 1982. In the twenty-first century, she has been resurrected as a serious reference point for mainstream figures, especially--but not only--those on the political right from Paul Ryan to Donald Trump. Mean Girl traces the posthumous appeal and influence of Rand's novels...

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter who wouldn't even deign to attend the medal ceremony? In 'Why Bob Dylan matters', Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers this question with magisterial erudition. A world expert on Classical poetry,...

The most important words ever written are the Ten Commandments. These words changed the world when they were first presented at Mt. Sinai to Israelites, and they are changing it now. They are the foundation stones of Western Civilization. Given their staggering importance, you would think that all societies, and certainly our educational and religious institutions, would be intent on studying them closely. Sadly, this is not the case. Our schools...

"Ernst Lubitsch's sophisticated, elegant, and stylish films of the 1930s and 1940s are often credited with creating the genre of the classic Hollywood romantic comedy. Famed for the "Lubitsch touch" and his distinct comedic style particularly when it came to romance and sex and American hypocrisy around them. Lubitsch's films influenced and won the admiration of his fellow directors, including Welles, Hitchcock, and most notably Billy Wilder. And,...

Tyler Perry is the most successful African-American filmmaker of his generation, garnering both accolades and controversies with each new film. In Tyler Perry's America, Shayne Lee digs into eleven of Perry's highest-grossing films to explore key themes of race, gender, class, and religion, and, ultimately, to discuss what Perry's films reveal about contemporary African-American life. Filled with slapstick humor, musical wizardry, and religious imagery,...