Henry and Emily Folger had a magnificent obsession. They spent a life of virtually indiscriminate acquisitiveness compiling the largest collection of Shakespeare manuscripts and associated arcana in the world—and then gave all that they had acquired to the American nation, wrapped in the handsome…

Fifty years ago this coming All Saints’ Day, the United States government concluded its patronage of Ngo Dinh Diem by dispatching him from the presidency of South Vietnam. His removal, in a U.S.-countenanced Vietnamese military coup, might have been less dramatic had President Diem not perished,…

The Metamorphoses of Tintin