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Empires were a powerful force for obliterating natural and demographic barriers and forging connections among far-flung parts of the world. The British left their system of civil service in India, Kenya and Guyana, while the Spaniards, Portuguese and French spread Roman Catholicism to almost every continent...
...friends was typical of Arkansas clannishness. The state's white population is homogeneous and inbred. The base of its stable demographics was an influx of native-born Protestants from nearby states in the 19th century. It still has few foreign-born citizens -- or Jews (0.1% of the population) or Roman Catholics (3.1%, about a ninth of the national average). It is a Bible-reading and conservative state that passed one of the last creationism laws to teach an alternative to evolution...
Power abhors a vacuum. At the close of the 7th century A.D., Iberia had almost become one. Its central administrative order, that of the Roman Empire, had long since dissolved. Over it, Visigothic laws and Christian rites had been superimposed. But as a political entity, Iberia was on the verge of collapse. Thus when the Arabs looked across the Mediterranean, they saw a vast territory spotted with squabbling factions -- Christians, Jews, Visigoths -- separated from Africa by a small strait and ripe for conquest. In 711 a mixed force of Arabs and Berbers under the command of Musa ibn Nusayr crossed...
...have always struggled with foreign languages. Some part of me just doesn't get it. I figured the perfect language class at Harvard for me would have several key elements: a Roman alphabet, easy grammar rules and a classroom free of students who already knew the language and just couldn't pass the requirement...
...worked in an age when, although the mechanisms of fame were becoming more centralized, it was still possible to sustain a life's work on a provincial reputation. He lived in Emilia most of his life. But Rome was the great magnet, and he almost made it to the Roman big time when his patron, the Bolognese Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, became Pope in 1621 and summoned Guercino to the Vatican. There he painted one enormous canvas, the Burial and Reception into Heaven of Saint Petronilla, for an altar in Saint Peter's, but the Pope died in 1623, and back...