“No one does more harm in the Church than he who has the title or rank of holiness and acts perversely.”-St. Gregory the GreatThe pope, the bishop of Rome, claims spiritual authority over more than a billion Catholics worldwide. He also exercises temporal authority over a tiny enclave of Rome consisting of the Vatican Palace, Saint Peter’s Basilica, and 44 hectares with the ancient Leonine Walls. As Sovereign of the Vatican City States, he has around 1,000 subjects, mostly clerics....

The Pan-Hellenic Games is the collective term for the four major sports festivals held in ancient Greece. These include the Olympic Games, held in honor of Zeus at Olympia every four years; the Pythian Games in honor of Apollo, held at Delphi every four years; the Nemean Games, held to celebrate Zeus and Heracles at Nemea near Corinth every two years; and the Isthmian Games, honoring Poseidon at Isthmia every two years.The Olympiad, a period of four years, was one of the main ways ...

The Laugavegur is one of the big walks. It is the most famous trek in Iceland and crosses other worldly landscapes formed by recent volcanos. I did it from north to south and it runs over 80km from Landmannalauger via Thorsmork to Skogar on the coast. I started on the 15 June, the first day the bus ran to Landmannalaugar. I hadn’t booked the huts as I didn’t know whether I’d make it. So I took camping gear. The scenery is sensational and unlike anywhere I’d been before. At this time of the...

After D-Day had all but sealed the Allied victory, Stalin’s Red Army became more aggressive in retaking land formerly held by Germany. Concerned over the ever-widening Soviet map, Churchill met with Stalin in October 1944 (Roosevelt was by this time too frail to join them) and, while ceding Rumania and Bulgaria to the Soviets, insisted that Yugoslavia and Hungary be shared among the allies. The sticking point at the time seemed to be Poland. Stalin demanded that the very anti-communist Pol...

A gripping account of China’s nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles—a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China.The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a fail...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY LIBRARY JOURNAL • The extraordinary life of forgotten World War II hero Evans Carlson, commander of America’s first special forces, secret confidant of FDR, and one of the most controversial officers in the history of the Marine Corps, who dedicated his life to bridging the cultural divide between the United States and China“He was a gutsy old man.” “A corker,” said another. “You couldn’t find anyone better.” ...

As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War.As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by ...

It’s bad enough when your brother is possessed by a demon. It’s even worse when the only person who might be able to help turns you into a toad on her doorstep and tells you to keck off. But the fact that the planet is shaped like a cube? Well, that really isn’t her problem.Nelbow Rockfist is a dwarf on a mission. Her brother has a bad case of demonic possession and there is a shortage of exorcists. Her only hope is to convince the sorcerer Grumblechin to come out ...

The Massif Central is a highland in south-central France and historically the region, the Auverne, was a barrier. It was formed by ancient volcanic activity over many ages and was raised by the Alpine and Pyrenean uplifts. The rock is granite and metamorphic and the region contain hundreds of extinct volcanos or Puys. I was unfamiliar with the region and had never considered visiting it until recently, perhaps because it wasn't high or spiky enough in my youth or too agricultural. But the ...

The Mare a Mare Nord traverses Corsica from sea to sea. It’s nearly 100 miles long (152 km), involves nearly 7000 metres of ascent and descent and took me 11 days. I sailed to Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica, on the west coast, and the walk climbed thickly wooded valleys before crossing the GR20 and the mountainous backbone of Corsica at the Col de Vergio. From Corte, the town in the middle of the island, the path follows mule tracks that link isolated hilltop villages all the way to the e...

From the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century to the Chinese Communist movement in the twentieth, no province in China gave rise to as many reformers, military officers, and revolutionaries as did Hunan. Stephen Platt offers the first comprehensive study of why Hunan wielded such disproportionate influence.Covering a span of eight decades, this book portrays three generations of Hunanese scholar-activists who held their provincial loyalties above their allegiances to a q...

This was a culturally sensational trip, yet we only scratched the surface of this ancient empire and ultra modern people’s republic, visiting Shanghai, Hangzhou and Beijing. China is vast and complex – the world’s most populous country, the second largest in land area, with nearly 300 living languages and 7 mega cities with over 10 million inhabitants. We went on our way back from Australia and visited two ex post grad architecural students, Wendy in Hangzhou and Yingying in Beijing. In Sh...