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May 28, 2020
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Toby Lester

Toby Lester is a contributing editor of The Atlantic and Boston and the author of Da Vinci's Ghost and The Fourth Part of the World.

Soaring Ambitions

Soaring Ambitions

Early hot-air balloonists ascended to previously unimaginable heights, stirring humanity’s sense of perspective and possibility

by Toby Lester | Thursday, September 05, 2013
Armchair Travelers placeholder image

Armchair Travelers

The Renaissance writers and humanists Petrarch and Boccaccio turned to geography to understand the works of antiquity

by Toby Lester | Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Smarty Pants Podcast

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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

2nd Look

A Tale of War and Forgetting

by Neil Shea

In honor of Memorial Day this Monday, we’re revisiting this powerful essay from contributing editor Neil Shea, written just after the centennial of the First World War. Shea reflects on the war through the lens of Impressionist painting— viewed up close, he writes, “there is bravery and blindness, splinters of bone and steel, mud, horror, cacophony.” As time goes on, however, we risk seeing the war “as a vague event portrayed in colors that seem almost quaint.”