Robert Royal

Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historiansby Jeffrey Burton RussellPraeger, 117 pages, $12.95 Revisionist history offers satisfactions of several kinds to a certain type of writer. Not only does the reviser feel a sense of superiority to his predecessors, the benighted drudges who . . . . Continue Reading »

Just when we were convinced that Newsweek, like its counterpart Time, is an essentially superficial magazine for hurried people who want information without having to think, the mail brought the Fall/Winter 1991 Columbus Special Issue. Produced in collaboration with the “Seeds of . . . . Continue Reading »

As every schoolchild knows, Christopher Columbus, a Genoese navigator, discovered America in 1492. Or perhaps it would be better to say that every schoolchild used to think these were the facts about the European arrival in these lands. For several years now, a chorus of voices (growing larger and . . . . Continue Reading »

Some books—the detective novel is the most obvious genre—must be read as they are written, front to back. Peeking ahead spoils everything. Others, Hebrew texts and now Robert Jay Lifton and Eric Markusen’s The Genocidal Mentality are better approached (though for different . . . . Continue Reading »