<p><span class="deck">How a champagne picnic on Monument Mountain led to a profound revision of <span class="typestyle">Moby Dick</span> — and disenchantment</span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> The city has been a lure for millions, but most of the great American minds have been appalled by its excesses. Here an eminent observer, who knows firsthand the city’s threat, surveys the subject.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">She was the first whaleship ever sunk by her prey. But that’s not why she’s remembered.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody managed to extend the boundaries that cramped the lives of nineteenth-century women. Elizabeth introduced the kindergarten movement to America, Mary developed a new philosophy of mothering that we now take for granted, and Sophia was liberated from invalidism by her passionate love for her husband.</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck">His speech was called “our intellectual Declaration of Independence.” Its theme was the universe itself; its hero, Man Thinking. Now, one hundred and seventy-five years later, a noted scholar sees Emerson’s great vision as both more beleaguered and more urgent than ever.</span></p>
<p>There is much talk today about online piracy, but 19th century authors like Melville, Dickens, and Poe struggled financially because of the lack of international copyright law.</p>
