Day two in a series exploring how the trail of the Battle of Brooklyn, beginning with the British landing on August 22, 1776, would pass across modern-day New York. Shown above, the hills of Greenwood Cemetery.

In the lull before the battle—the first battle of the Revolutionary War, the 236th anniversary of which is coming on August 27th —it made sense to go out and look around, like a scout. A general on the side of the Americans would have used this time to survey the landscape, to traverse the hills and woods of Brooklyn and into New York (here are the receipts Washington sent to congress [...]

Part of a month-long series on terrible trips, great journeys and getting lost.

Here are some geographic and economic realities, as any educated European of the late 1400s would have understood them: The European diet was monotonous and people were willing to pay good money for spices to liven up their meals. Those spices for the most part came from places to the east, lumped together in the European mind as "the Indies." The easy and obvious routes there were blocked by Muslim states that were hostile to Christendom, and that made good money on the spice trade and weren't interested in sharing the profits with Europeans. And [...]

While compiling this list I attempted as often as possible to learn not what the presidents ate at state functions and inaugural dinners but during their solitary breakfasts and family suppers—in other words, their comfort foods. Often this information came from contemporary accounts, and occasionally from the recipe cards of first ladies who left for posterity the dishes they'd cooked for their husbands, during the White House years as well as the early days of their marriages. Where this was difficult to track down (such as with the earlier presidents), I focused on menu items from the more personal of the large events (birthday and wedding dinners, for example) held [...]

In 1914 Max Beerbohm wrote to Vyvyan Holland, the younger son of Oscar and Constance Wilde, on the occasion of Holland's wedding. Beerbohm sent his regrets for not having been able to attend the wedding, together with a present.

It has the advantage of being easily breakable if you don't like it. The glasses are (you will be relieved to hear) of British manufacture, but I can't tell you just when they were made. I asked the old man in the shop to tell me the date of them. Whereat he stroked his chin and, looking at me over his spectacles, said "Well, Sir, what would you say to [...]

With 5,478 documented arrests in fewer than three months, with New York City voters, in essence, actually liking Occupy Wall Street protestors better than the mayor, with dingbat Time declaring this the year of the protester, it's safe to say the battle for hearts and minds is won. Okay, yay, we won! So… what now?

Well, one good thing to know is that the Tea Party routine is a failure. Getting big money to back candidates to go to D.C. either results in morons being moronic or results in just putting more greedy cats on the greedy gravy train. It doesn't create change; it [...]

Very little happens in Brooklyn Heights. During Truman Capote’s years here, his friends would enquire, “But what do you do over there?” It was a fair question—and an eternal one. Mine wonder the same thing. One pleasure of America’s first suburb is that it is, to an extent unusual in an ever-churning city, impervious to change—economically, structurally, but also in a more fundamental sense: The question, Did anything happen in the Heights today? can almost always be answered with Not much. The news is blessedly mundane: Either a pet is missing or the street’s been sullied by a fallen tree or pothole.

If the Heights seems like a [...]

One other thing about the MacArthur "Genius" Grants (apart from the David Simon thing, which, who cares), awarded to some individuals working in some fields to which you may not necessarily be paying attention-oceanic acoustic engineering! Jellyfish propulsion!-to some that you may be-the poor honeybees!-is that getting $500,000 dropped on you over five years does not necessarily make you happy or successful. That being said, their track record on visual artists and writers over the decades has been nearly impeccable. (Ada Louise Huxtable in 1981! Thom Gunn in 1993! Meredith Monk in 1995! David Foster Wallace in 1997! Anne Carson in 2000! Lydia Davis in 2003! Tara Donovan [...]

The British invasion began on this day in 1776. For the next couple weeks, Robert Sullivan will be considering how the trail of the Battle of Brooklyn would pass across modern-day New York.

Say the Revolutionary War had never happened back in 1776. Say the British and the American colonists had been able to keep their relationship patched together for another 236 years, puttering along like an old car. Say things were at last things coming to a boil—perhaps due to some remark made by Bob Costas during the Olympics, or due to a break in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal. Say the British were at last about to invade. [...]

37. "From Overseas" (Louis IV) 36. "The Posthumous" (John I) 35. "The Lazy" (Louis V) 34. "The Young" (Louis VII) 33. "The Stammerer" (Louis II) 32. "The Fat" (Louis VI) 31. "The Bald" (Charles II) 30. "The Short" (Pepin) 29. "The Tall" (Philip V) 28. "The Simple" (Charles III) 27. "The Handsome" (Philip IV, Charles IV) x 26. "The Pious" (Louis I, Robert II) 25. "The Father of the People" (Louis XII) 24. "The Great" (Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon I) 23. "The Good" (John II)

Part of a two-week series on the pull of bad influences in our lives and in the culture.

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The highbrow way that most people know about Edward II of England is from Christopher Marlowe's biographical play about him, or from Brecht's stage adaptation or Derek Jarman's film adaptation of the same; the lowbrow way is from Braveheart. Either way, the main thing you probably think you know about him is that he was gay. Leaving aside the question of how sexual desire mapped on to self-identity in the 1300s, there are certainly reasons to believe that he was attracted to men. Snide remarks crop up in many [...]

Anyone who considers growing a beard weighs the same set of pros and cons. Assuming you’re already confident in your ability to muster respectable whiskers—and you may not be, as one sad sack relates—your immediate concern is probably skin irritation. Beards itch. They itch you, and they’ll itch anyone you’re close to. They can even irk casual observers. Try watching Giant’s relief pitcher Brian Wilson midgame. The fake beards donned by fans meant to display support for Wilson’s Black Beard Revival are an affront to his dedication. In the midst of summer, hurling 100 mph fastballs, that thing probably feels like a bird’s nest made of fiber [...]

There is a website, called The 1940s Experiment, whose proprietor, Carolyn Ekins, who was born and raised in the UK but now lives in Canada, is attempting to lose a hundred pounds by following a wartime rations diet, specifically made up of the foods eaten by the British public during World War II. For every pound she loses, Carolyn will recreate one authentic wartime recipe and post about it. She has already posted recipes for Mock Goose (made with lentils), Potato and Carrot Pancakes ("delicious") and an Eggless Fruit Cake (“looks curiously like meat loaf”), among many others. Carolyn has attempted—and succeeded at—this type of diet [...]

"It's a frozen lump of frozen gases and I suppose not a terribly friendly place. Let's wish it a happy birthday but perhaps let's keep as far away from it as we can as it won't give you a welcome." —British astronomer Alan Chapman, on the fact that tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of the discovery of of Neptune—in Neptunian years, which are 164.79 times longer than Earth years. It was on September 24, 1896 that Johann Gottfried Galle, using theoretical predictions made earlier by French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (and, of course, a telescope) officially discovered the eighth planet in our solar system, 4.4 billion [...]