Fred Kaplan's biographies of Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens are part of a projected biographical quartet charting the sweep of Anglo-American culture from the Romantic to the modern era. Kaplan is committed to biography as a literary form and draws...

Many a child was surely puzzled by those few seconds in that episode of The Simpsons which finds Lisa packing for the family holiday: among the items to go into the bag is a hefty volume, called Tome, by Gore Vidal, a version of...

Fred A. Kaplan, 58, a professional sports photographer who formerly lived in Brighton, died of a heart attack Dec. 20 at his home in San Rafael, Calif. Mr. Kaplan's career started when Ted Williams, who was his neighbor in Brighton, gave Mr. Kaplan...

The device that was supposed to revolutionize urban transportation seems unable to even hold on to a proper fan club.The Segway Enthusiasts Group of America is disbanding because of inactivity and an absence of candidates for its board of directors, said the group's treasurer, Fred...

Ornette Coleman stands before Jackson Pollock’s Number 13 (1949), one of the more poetic splatter paintings, ferociously dense yet airily light. He ponders it for several minutes, tracing his index finger over its subtler patterns. “These don’t look like strokes,” he finally says in his...