A foundation of truth – French author talks about the importance of biography

Greek historian Plutarch, regarded as the father of biography, once summed up the need for the genre: “The first impulse to write biography arose from the moral desire to hold up for public example the lives and characters of illustrious persons in order to extol the virtues to be emulated and the vices to be eschewed.”

Trends Lounge book listing

Drawing on the resources of the world’s largest international text and television news agency, this book explores the questions all humans ask: What roles do religion and our deepest beliefs play in contemporary life?

Life’s first steps – The adventure of the world’s children

Everything is a great adventure for a newborn, but it’s an adventure soon forgotten unless someone is recording it.

Dec 24,2010

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Year of the Tablet, or the Year of the iPad?

Last year, as 2009 came to a close, I wrote a blog post predicting that 2010 would be the “Year of the Tablet.” This was several months before the Apple iPad would be announced by Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive.

Beyond Twitter: What’s Next for Designers in 2011

In the midst of the recession, designers could actually help their hard-hit businesses by focusing on e-commerce and social network connections. The ones who did that are looking pretty smart right now, because there are even more new ideas to try in 2011.

Art Imitates Movies in a Series of Scenes

PHILADELPHIA — An inspired meeting of the big, encyclopedic museum and the small university kunsthalle is under way at the Institute of Contemporary Art here, where the artist Virgil Marti has taken a turn as guest curator. His show, “Set Pieces,” transports decorative works from the storage rooms of the Philadelphia Museum of Art across town to the institute and is as irreverent as it is resourceful.

Warhol’s Silent Film Portraits

Who is the fairest of them all? Edie Sedgwick, that’s who, no contest. Of the 13 subjects of the short films known as “Screen Tests” featured in “Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures” at the Museum of Modern Art, none are loved more by the camera than that doomed “it girl” of the 1960s.

Can We Feel Good About Our Necks?

NECKS don’t lie. Sagging there betrays age like the rings on a tree, and now-common Botox and fillers in the face make neck imperfections stand out in stark relief. In her 2006 best-seller, “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” Nora Ephron, by then 65 and a resolved turtleneck wearer, raged against the injustice of having no remedy for her slackening throat skin, short of surgery.

Beyond Popping Corks, the Sounds of the New Year

SALUTING the new year huddled around the hearth with family and friends — bedecked in sequins and plastic “2011” spectacles, spilling warm Champagne on the sofa — is good, old-fashioned fun. But wouldn’t you rather spend the night with Patti Smith?