The Venice Tales

Bad weather, ruined harvests, starving farmers flooding cities, resulting in revolution and devastation. Syria in the twenty-first...

A perfect design is rare. There's something beautiful in the idea, a thing that just can't be improved upon. Our planet teems with life,...

There's a lot to like about Rachel Schwarzlose's book, Brainscapes. She's a funny, smart writer with a well written survey of the latest...

The full title of Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde's book is Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our...

I've been a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay since The Lions of Al-Rassan, which was quite some time ago. I love his world-building of...

Anyone paying attention knows that the modern world owes a lot of debts to the Serene Republic. The Republic of Venice lasted 1100 years,...

When I first heard Venice had a poison factory, I couldn't believe it. Venice invented a lot of things we take for granted, and improved...

Writers read. Maybe not all of them, but surely most. One of the great things about learning to write in the increased appreciation it's...