By Bobbie Leigh   Gouged out of soft stone, the cave dwellings in the  steep, craggy cliffs of  Matera  are  without a doubt the most unusual in all of Italy. There's  probably nothing like their chaotic, troglodyte "spontaneous architecture"...

       In Getting Into Guinness: One Man's Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World's Most Famous Record Book, writer Larry Olmsted not only chronicles the 50-year history of Guinness World Records. He explains in some detail how he managed to set two ...

Reviewed by Bobbie Leigh     Five superb masterpieces that – notoriously – rarely travel and leave the tranquil galleries of the Norton Simon Foundation and Museum in California have made a once-in-your--lifetime cross-country trek to the Frick. At the opening of Masterpieces o...

Reviewed by Richard West     Remarkable, isn’t it, that Abraham  Lincoln, savior of democracy and the United States, and Charles Darwin, founder of modern biology and the world’s most influential naturalist, were born on the same date: February 12, 1809. And to think peop...

        Years ago, I wrote a book on Brazil. I was happy and privileged to spend months traveling to the Pantanal, the Amazon and Bahia (not to mention Recife, Belem and Minas Gerais, among many other places, with countless adventures along the way).   ...

(Photo courtesy of the BBC) Reviewed by Richard West     Recently, I gazed at a map of the world and fondly remembered countries visited: sites seen, people met, divine meals devoured, memorable mementoes purchased, and also the unpleasantness of trips, luggage lost, vigorous bigot...

By William Triplett     You don't often see ski resorts reflecting a town's dueling cultural influences, especially in Utah, which was founded almost exclusively by people of like minds and hearts. But Mormon pioneers were not alone in settling Ogden, 35 miles north of Salt...

 By Ed Wetschler     James Hayney will impersonate Abraham Lincoln at the National Civil War Museum on February 14, 2009, to honor the 16th president's birthday bicentennial. By the time you read this, of course, you may have missed the show. No matter. Hayney is good, ve...

         There's only one reason that a dedicated skier would forsake the snows of Zermatt or Aspen in midwinter and fly to London or New York. And that would be to bid on vintage ski posters at the annual winter sales at Christie's in South Kensington and...

         North American ski resorts have gotten plenty of media coverage so far this winter, but most of it has not exactly been the kind of news that publicists dream of. Instead we've heard all about avalanches at Jackson Hole, bomb threats in Aspen, f...