"A disarming, intelligent, and timely book" that re-examines religious history and scripture with a focus on the feminine experience ( The New York Times).In the world that created the Bible, there were no female scholars and theologians, yet in recent decades, owing to such stunning discoveries as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts, as well as advances in historical understanding and the rise of feminism, a generation of scholars has found new ...

"From Torquemada to Guantánamo and beyond, Cullen Murphy finds the 'inquisitorial impulse' alive, and only too well, in our world" (Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money).Established by the Catholic Church in 1231, the Inquisition continued in one form or another for almost seven hundred years. Though associated with the persecution of heretics and Jews—and with burning at the stake—its targets were more numerous, its techniques were more ambitious, and its eff...

From Cullen Murphy, editor at large of Vanity Fair, God's Jury is a chilling and powerful account of how the techniques used by the Spanish Inquisition created our modern world.For centuries states have used their power to censor, watch, manipulate and punish. God's Jury argues that the Inquisition - the Catholic body that existed for over 700 years - is not a medieval oddity, but is intrinsically bound up with modernity. From Vatican archives to Guantána...

It is from the discards of former civilizations that archaeologists have reconstructed most of what we know about the past, and it is through their examination of today’s garbage that William Rathje and Cullen Murphy inform us of our present. Rubbish! is their witty and erudite investigation into all aspects of the phenomenon of garbage. Rathje and Murphy show what the study of garbage tells us about a population’s demographics and buying habits. Along the way, they dispel the com...

Some of America’s best reporters and thinkers offer an urgent look at a country in chaos in this collection of timely, often prophetic articles from The Atlantic.The past four years in the United States have been among the most turbulent in our history—and would have been so even without a global pandemic and waves of protest nationwide against police violence. Drawn from the recent work of The Atlantic staff writers and contributors, The Amer...

What went wrong in imperial Rome, and how we can avoid it: “If you want to understand where America stands in the world today, read this."—Thomas E. RicksThe rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds since the beginning of our republic. Depending on who’s doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action—or a dire warning of imminent collapse.In this “provocative and lively” book, Cullen Murphy points out that...

**One of Vanity Fair's Best Books of 2022"Milton Gendel had the good fortune to live a wildly entertaining life in Rome—a charmed, romantic period he captured in diaries and photos. Milton had the further good fortune to have Cullen Murphy bring this vanished dolce vita to life." —Graydon Carter, coeditor of Air MailA never-before-seen treasure trove of photos and diary entries from the celebrated photographer Milton Gendel...

A poignant history of the cartoonists and illustrators from the Connecticut SchoolFor a period of about fifty years, right in the middle of the American Century, many of the the nation's top comic-strip cartoonists, gag cartoonists, and magazine illustrators lived within a stone's throw of one another in the southwestern corner of Connecticut—a bit of bohemia in the middle of those men in their gray flannel suits.Cullen Murphy's father, John Cullen Murphy, dr...

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE, THE IRISH TIMES AND THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT**SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZEA provocative history of men who were worshipped as gods that illuminates the connection between power and religion and the role of divinity in a secular age.**Ever since 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World and was hailed as a heavenly being, the accidental god ...

This examination of six usurper kings of England, and the people and circumstances surrounding them, is "a masterpiece of academic scholarship" ( Midwest Book Review).In the Middle Ages, England had to contend with a string of usurpers who disrupted the British monarchy—and ultimately changed the course of European history by deposing England's reigning kings and seizing power for themselves. Some of the most infamous usurper kings to come out of medieval ...

From the hooves of chariot horses pounding the dust of the racetrack to the cries of elephants charging the battlefields, animals were a key part of Roman life. On memorials left to beloved dogs or in images of arena animals hammered onto coins, their stories and roles in Roman history are there for us to find.Why did the emperor Augustus always have a seal skin nearby?What was the most dangerous part of a chariot race?How could a wolf help with tooth...

The sensational true story of George Dinning, a freed slave, who in 1899 joined forces with a Confederate war hero in search of justice in the Jim Crow south. “Taut and tense. Inspiring and terrifying in its timelessness.”(Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad )Named a most anticipated book of 2021 by O, The Oprah MagazineNamed a "must-read" by the Chicago Review of Books