January/February 2014
In This Issue January/February 2014
New Money in New Spain
Colonial opulence had to be displayed behind closed doors.
By Meredith Hindley
Volume 35, Issue 1
The moneyed elite of New Spain loved beautiful, decadent clothing—as in this 1752 portrait by Miguel Cabrera of Don Juan Xavier Joachín Gutiérrez Altamirano Velasco, the Count of Santiago de Calimaya. See the story "New Money in New Spain," about the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition “Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492–1898."
—Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund and the Dick S. Ramsay Fund
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Features
From American Playhouse to 12 Years a Slave
From American Playhouse to 12 Years a Slave, two films give different views of the same story.
By Chad L. Williams
Culture War
Hitler's propagandists co-opted key intellectual figures in the Western canon to suit their political agenda.
By David B. Dennis
The White Pages
America's greatest personal essayist was more than a little shy and intensely self-conscious
By Danny Heitman
Paper Trail
On letters, diaries, and other records of the American story at the Massachusetts Historical Society
By Nicholas A. Basbanes
To Be or Not to Be
In a digital archive of Hamlet quartos, classic Shakespearean words come and go.
By James Williford -
Departments
Statements
Mistress of Math
Beyond her relationship with Voltaire, Émilie du Châtelet was one of the foremost thinkers of her time.
By Steve BarnesFirst Lady of the Revolution
An Alabama girl married into a revolution in Costa Rica.
By Tory CooneyOne-Off
A Marked Man
For nineteenth-century sailor, tattoos both smoothed the way and caused alarm.
By Tory CooneyImpertinent Questions
Impertinent Questions with Jack Russell Weinstein
On the long reach of Adam Smith.
By Meredith HindleyExecutive Function
Scott Russell of the Northern Mariana Islands
Scott Russell balances the interests of locals and newcomers in the Northern Mariana Islands.
By Katy June-Friesen
