What We Search For In

I Have A Recurring Fantasy That One More Article Has Been Added To The Bill Of Rights: The Right To Free Access To Imagination.

Most Great Works Of The Imagination Were Meant To Make You Feel Like A Stranger In Your Own Home. The Best Fiction Always Forced Us To Question What We Took For Granted. It Questioned Traditions And Expectations When They Seemed To Immutable.

None Of Us Can Avoid Being Contaminated By The World's Evils; It's All A Matter Of What Attitude You Take Towards Them.

What Dazzles Us In Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra Are Not The Alluring Mythologies About The Evasive Queen, But The Astonishing If Rare Historical Facts That Schiff Has Meticulously And Lovingly Excavated. Schiff Offers Not Just Cleopatra's Story But The Story Of An Amazing Era, One That Has Vanished But Still Affects Us, Questioning The Way We Look At Myth, History, And Ourselves.

We All Had To Pay, But Not For The Crimes We Were Accused Of. There Were Other Scores To Settle.