The untold story of eels

The eel is a fish – a most mysterious fish regarded variously as delicious, vile or magical. James Prosek, who graduated from Yale, offers an exhilarating tour through the history of the eel: the only fish that spawns in the middle of the ocean but spends its adult life in freshwater.

Expat romance of the 19th century

From 1863 to 1908, Sir Robert Hart was inspector general of China’s Imperial Maritime Custom Service (IMCS), which played a crucial role in imperial politics and significantly influenced the government’s internal reform and diplomatic policy.

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On a family visit to the city, Mom is right behind her husband when the train pulls out of Seoul Station without her and she is lost, possibly forever.

English writer’s curious search for love unveiled

By the age of 32, British novelist E.M. Forster had already experienced “weariness of the only subject that I both can and may treat – the love of men for women and vice versa.” It was a mysterious relationship that would puzzle him throughout his life.

Identity lost in a foreign land

In Chinese history, the Western Xia Dynasty refers to the kingdom of the Tangut ethnic group. Their kingdom, which lasted from 1038-1227, was overthrown by Mongol invaders in the early 13th century.

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Special essays provide insights into the history of shoe fashion and the shoemaking craft. Excellent color photographs illustrate each stage in the making of these works of art in leather.

Telling the story of 19th-century China

The First Opium Wars (1840-1842) began a century of humiliation for China. The memory of the era’s defeat and ensuing abuse is an important element in modern Chinese nationalism and identity, but the period is “not well-known in the West, especially in Britain,” said Robert Bickers, a professor of history at the University of Bristol and author of The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914.

Father’s odyssey through college admissions

The cutthroat competition to get into an ideal college can drive students to the brink of madness and push their parents over the edge.

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Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Jennifer Egan reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect.

Anti-Semitism traced to financial illiteracy

Thinkers from Aristotle through the Renaissance believed that money should be considered sterile: a mere means of exchange incapable of producing additional value.