Julian Evans Julian Evans first visited the city of Odesa on a boat journey down the Dnipro River in 1994. He fell in love with its crumbling baroque beauty, and with its distinct personality as a self-contained world: part stage set and part port city on the make, a place where the boundaries between the actual and imaginary were continually blurring. He also fell in love with a local...
It’s that time of year when I tempt you to obliterate what remains of your savings. Hey, it could be worse. At least you’re not pissing it away on unoriginal streaming music or vapid superhero rehash. I’ve got some great books to recommend this year. As usual, I read and re-read a lot of travel literature to prepare for Personal Landscapes podcast conversations. I also have a few essential...
Jeffrey Meyers A great biography reveals the raw humanity behind lives of rare genius. Plutarch’s Lives set the pattern for the biographical arts in the tumultuous second century, and formed a source of inspiration for everyone from Shakespeare to America’s founding fathers. It seems to have fallen from grace in an age when projecting current values into the deepest corners of the past has...