In summer, New York can feel like hell: too hot, crowded with grumps, oppressive. But our city does hide some secret oases, public green spaces that are like secret gardens, secluded and intimate. Take the shady lawn at the Cooper Hewitt, with its immaculate perennial...

There were a few skeptics when tourism officials and business leaders first approached dozens of golf courses along the Sierra's eastern front about pooling their resources to help promote the area as a golfing destination.Why would anyone want to help their competitors?Nearly a decade later,...

Pope Benedict XVI urged a solution to conflicts across the world, especially in the Middle East and Africa, in a Christmas Day address that included an appeal for the poor, the exploited, and all those who suffer."With deep apprehension I think, on this festive day,...

"Relax. There will be no test."That's how Rick Steves' "Europe 101: History & Art for the Traveler" begins.The $24.95 book, just out in its seventh edition from California-based Avalon Travel, tells you everything you forgot (or never learned) in that European history class you took...

The Diviners is the most comprehensive [of all the Manawaka novels] in its quest and the most complicated in its structure. Morag's journey is epic in its striving and cosmological in its scope. She seeks to understand her relation to all life, all time and eternity, and the resolution she finally comes to has both sacred and secular meanings for her. In all of her Manawaka novels, Margaret Laurence has worked with concepts of time. Hagar, Rachel, and Stacey are all enslaved by quantitative time, the...