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Alexander Hamilton the Bachelor
In December of 1779, a twenty-four year-old Alexander Hamilton wrote to his friend John Laurens, asking Laurens to find for him a wife in South Carolina: “She must be young, handsome (I lay most...
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F*ck
Where does the word “fuck” come from? The problem with tracing the origin of taboo words is that people don’t write them down, precisely because they’re taboo. So you have to do a lot of detective...
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Twerk Ethics: Miley Cyrus and Moral Indignation
I never had a conversation with my grandfather, but I know a few of the things he used to say. One of his pet phrases, I’m told, was “Too many parties, too many pals,” a cautionary line he’d tell his...
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Jack’s Easy Conquests
“Jack’s greatest success in his first two years at Harvard was in winning friends and proving to be ‘a lady’s man’… Jack’s discovery that girls liked him or that he had a talent for charming them gave...
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C.S. Lewis Reflects on the Birds and the Bees
“When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass – may pass in the first half-hour –...
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Charles Darwin Decides to Marry
In late July of 1838, a twenty-nine-year-old Charles Darwin, mulling over his charmed courtship of cousin Emma Wedgwood, split two pages of his journal for a cost-benefit analysis in which he jotted...
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That Time Margaret Thatcher Spanked Christopher Hitchens
“I had written a longish article for The New York Times Magazine, saying in effect that, if Labour could not revolutionize British society, then the task might well fall to the right. I had also...
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