The 100 Greatest Paintings of All Time: From Botticelli and Bosch to Bacon and Basquiat

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It would be a worth­while exer­cise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100 favorite paint­ings of all time. Nat­u­ral­ly, those not pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with art his­to­ry may have some trou­ble quite hit­ting that num­ber. Still, how­ev­er many titles we can write down, each of us…

Leonard Bernstein: The Greatest 5 Minutes in Music Education

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We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about one of Leonard Bernstein’s major works, The Unan­swered Ques­tion, the stag­ger­ing six-part lec­ture that the mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary artist gave as part of his duties as Har­vard’s Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor. Over 11 hours, Bern­stein attempts to explain the whith­er and the whence of music his­to­ry, notably at a time when…

How John Lennon Wrote the Beatles’ Best Song, “A Day in the Life”

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If you’re under 60, you prob­a­bly heard the line “I read the news today, oh boy” before encoun­ter­ing the song it opens. Even after you dis­cov­ered the work of the Bea­t­les, it may have tak­en you some time to under­stand what, exact­ly, it was that John Lennon read in the news. The “lucky…

Albert Einstein’s Grades: A Fascinating Look at His Report Cards

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Albert Ein­stein was a pre­co­cious child.

At the age of twelve, he fol­lowed his own line of rea­son­ing to find a proof of the Pythagore­an The­o­rem. At thir­teen he read Kant, just for the fun of it. And before he was fif­teen he had taught him­self dif­fer­en­tial and inte­gral cal­cu­lus.

But while the…

Wim Wenders’ New Short Film Reminds Europe of the Lessons of World War II

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World War II offi­cial­ly end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 2, 1945. It fol­lowed, by less than three weeks, an equal­ly momen­tous event, at least in the eyes of cinephiles: the birth of Wim Wen­ders. Though soon to turn 80 years old, Wen­ders has remained both pro­duc­tive and capa­ble of draw­ing great crit­i­cal acclaim. Wit­ness, for exam­ple,…