Wayward Saints

LitStack Recs: A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople & Wayward Saints

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople, by Patrick Leigh Fermor A classic of the travel memoir genre, A Time of Gifts is Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of his trek by foot from the Netherlands to Turkey in 1933-34. Though, famously, Fermor didn’t actually write the book until decades […]

LitStack Rec: Havanas in Camelot & Wayward Saints

Havanas in Camelot: Personal Essays, by William Styron Though William Styron is best know for his novels (The Confessions of Nat Turner, Sophie’s Choice), and a late memoir chronicling his depression (Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness), he wrote wonderful essays that draw on his power of insight, intellectual acuity, […]

Birthdays

On this day, April 9, in 1967, Sam Harris was born in Los Angeles, California. Possessing a Ph.D. in
cognitive neuroscience from UCLA, he used magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. Growing up in a progressive secular household, his books explore morality, free will, and the questioning of religion (he is a leading figure in the New Atheist movement); he also established “Project Reason”, whose main aim is the promotion of scientific knowledge and secular values within society, and in 2018 he released a meditation app, Waking Up with Sam Harris. Currently the host of the podcast Making Sense, today he turns 54.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.