Articles by Merle Rubin

BROTHERLY love may be a beautiful ideal, but a curiously difficult one to achieve. Read more

WHAT is the secret of the classics’ enduring appeal? Read more

THE West African nation of Nigeria has suffered more than its share of violence and corruption, starting with its blatantly misrepresentative first election in 1960 and on through its genocidal attacks on its Igbo population before and during the civil war with secessionist Biafra in 1967 through 1970. Read more

DOWN through the centuries, the legend of those bygone days when knighthood was in flower has maintained an enduring hold on the imagination. Read more

Sea of Faith Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World Stephen O’Shea Walker & Co.: 414 pp., $26.95 * HISTORY is always relevant, although at certain times, certain moments in history may seem especially so. Read more

Ruby A Novel Francesca Lia Block and Carmen Staton HarperCollins: 210 pp., $21.95 * IT’S easy to sneer at novels relying on the principle of wish-fulfillment, but is there really anything wrong with stories that end happily ever after? Read more

HEARING once again in these pages the voice of Howard Zinn, indefatigable advocate for social and economic justice, one isn’t quite sure whether to give a rousing cheer of approval or shake one’s head in not-so-mild dismay. Read more

OF the trio of essayists from the Romantic era whose work regularly turns up in anthologies – William Hazlitt, Thomas de Quincey and Charles Lamb – Lamb is probably the most remote to modern tastes. Read more

“IT actually was a dark and stormy night,” is how Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler begin “The Monsters,” their account of that momentous evening in the summer of 1816 when five young people, gathered at a villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, embarked on a friendly competition to see who could write the best ghost story. Read more