Natasha Sumner does not answer that question in her latest book, Heroes of the Gale: A History of Fionn and the Fianna .She ...

On Democracy,” edited by David Bromwich.

The Rise and Fall of Athens’s Naval Mastermind,” by Michael Scott.

Warren Frye on “The Saga of the Earls of Orkney,” edited and translated by Judith Jesch.

George Loomis on “Un ballo in maschera,” at the Paris Opera.

Mahler’s Third began with a blatty onset in the horns—but, as they continued, those horns were arresting. Part I as a whole ...

Music has long depended on its benefactors, including commissioners. Think of the three string quartets that make up Beethoven’s Op. 59. They’re known as the “Razumovsky Quartets,” because Count ...

On political philosophy, Egon Schiele, Gainsborough, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Hogarth & more from the world of culture.

But Alfred Chester’s 1962 complaint in Commentary was still largely valid decades later: “Updike has no sense of invention, ...