Since I had open- heart surgery, I do not believe I am the same person. Along with a new heart valve, I also look out upon a new world in a new way. It...

With no apologies, I put to you the great truth that books will change your life. Just before Spring Break, a history major came by my office door to...

The third grader at Oaklawn Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, had waited for this day. Usually, his father would come around at the end of the school...

I write these words with the prospect of an academic Spring Break ahead. Next week such normal goings on will be temporarily suspended. This is not...

Kids say the darndest things. And, sometimes, you, dear students, write the darndest things. An essay response is required on every examination that...

Sometimes I forget as a professor of history how difficult the study of history often is. In “The Past is a Foreign Country,” the historian David Lowenthal...

Two decades ago, we left Kentucky for Arkansas for me to teach in the history department of a small college. We returned after four years away; we loved...

I think I know how Tyler Holloway, the assistant coach of the Belmont Bruins and the former shooting guard at Murray State, felt as he sat on the Belmont...

I have before me the image of Albrecht Durer’s “Melencolia I,” completed in 1514 as perhaps the finest of his copperplate engravings. According...

Does the act of writing remain a mystery to you? Do you cringe at the thought of those book reviews, research papers and essays that must be turned in...

In the life of a college professor, a portion of each week is taken up in what is referred to in academe as “office hours.” If not in class, we...

Nothing makes me more nervous during the course of a semester than final examinations. For me, final exams mimic life itself. I think I remember my...