During the past decade, Tony Judt emerged as one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He’s combative, often controversial (especially when talking about Israel), and sometimes disliked. But he’s taken seriously. And many have had nothing but sheer praise for his master work, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. The NYU historian had built up a career that many envied. But then things started going wrong … physically, not intellectually. In 2008, Judt was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. And he made his diagnosis widely known earlier this year, when he published an essay, “Night,” in The New York Review of Books. The article is short, but it brings you right inside his daily experience. He writes:

During the day I can at least request a scratch, an adjustment, a drink, or simply a gratuitous re-placement of my limbs—since enforced stillness for hours on end is not only physically uncomfortable but psychologically close to intolerable. It is not as though you lose the desire to stretch, to bend, to stand or lie or run or even exercise. But when the urge comes over you there is nothing—nothing—that you can do except seek some tiny substitute or else find a way to suppress the thought and the accompanying muscle memory.

But then comes the night. … If I allow a stray limb to be mis-placed, or fail to insist on having my midriff carefully aligned with legs and head, I shall suffer the agonies of the damned later in the night. I am then covered, my hands placed outside the blanket to afford me the illusion of mobility but wrapped nonetheless since—like the rest of me—they now suffer from a permanent sensation of cold. I am offered a final scratch on any of a dozen itchy spots from hairline to toe; the Bi-Pap breathing device in my nose is adjusted to a necessarily uncomfortable level of tightness to ensure that it does not slip in the night; my glasses are removed…and there I lie: trussed, myopic, and motionless like a modern-day mummy, alone in my corporeal prison, accompanied for the rest of the night only by my thoughts.

This experience hasn’t slowed down Judt a bit. In fact, quite the opposite, Judt has been ramping up his publications, proving even more prolific than before. (His latest book, Ill Fares the Land, will be published this week.) Judt’s battle with ALS and his sense of intellectual urgency get discussed in the latest edition of New York Magazine. It’s a piece well worth reading. So also is the large profile that ran in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January. Above we feature an interview with Judt posted by The Guardian.

Tony Judt, Leading Public Intellectual, Confronts ALS is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

March 15th. It translates to the Ides of March on the Roman Calendar. And it’s the date when Julius Caesar was famously assassinated in 44 B.C. To mark the occasion (today is the Ides of March), we bring you a dramatic, six-minute clip of the assassination scene from the film version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz in 1953. The scene features Louis Calhern as Caesar, John Gielgud as Cassius and James Mason as Brutus.  The film also stars Marlon Brando as Mark Antony, but we only get a fleeting glimpse of him in this scene as the plotters contrive to separate him from Caesar.

Note: You can download a free audio version of Shakespeare’s play thanks to Librivox, or get a free etext here. And if you have an iPhone, feel free to download a free app that includes all of Shakespeare plays.

Mike, one of our faithful readers, gets all of the cred for this one! Many thanks.

Julius Caesar Gets Clipped 2054 Years Ago Today is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

How did the artist Kseniya Simonova win the Ukrainian version of Britain’s Got Talent? By using the art of sand painting to recount the story of Germany’s invasion of Ukraine in 1941. Life was somewhat ordinary, then it all fell apart. And, by the war’s end, an estimated 10 million Ukrainians were left dead. It’s a difficult story to tell. And I’m referring not just to the story’s content, but to the actual medium too. Thanks Steve for the heads up on this one.

For more sand painting, check out the work of Ilana Yahav.

World War II Relived through Sand Painting is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

The Science/Liberty Nexus is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

This imaginative bit was a student’s final project for an art course. The flipbook, made entirely out of biro pens, was created with 2100 pages of drawings and took about 3 weeks to develop. Needless to say, the student got an A.

Thanks to @kirstinbutler for flagging this one.

A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Here’s Warsaw in 1935, devastated in 1943, and restored today. You can click here to see the pictures in a bigger size.

For more imagery, including pictures of Stuttgart, Naples and Lyon, see the Google Earth blog.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Institute for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture. He also participates in The Partially Examined Life, a podcast consisting of informal discussions about philosophical texts by three philosophy graduate school dropouts.

Time Travel with Google Earth is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Sad news. Howard Zinn, the American historian best known for his book, A People’s History of the United States, died today of a heart attack at the age of 87. The Boston Herald has more on his life and passing here. If you’re familiar with Zinn’s biography, you’ll know that he served in World War II and later took a strong position against the Vietnam War. So, perhaps fittingly, we feature Zinn talking above about wars and the role governments play in manufacturing them…

Howard Zinn Dies at 87 is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

A History of the World in 100 Objects is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

The History of the Seemingly Impossible Chinese Typewriter is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Jared Diamond Explains Haiti’s Enduring Poverty is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com