The Libraries They Left Behind

The Libraries They Left Behind

Constantinople, November 3, 1494The city has been Ottoman for forty years. The scholars who fled westward after the fall took what they could carry. What they could not carry remained, and what remained is what drew me here: the libraries no one thought to burn...
What the Himalayas Knew

What the Himalayas Knew

Himalayas, circa 1507The monks in the high passes had been watching empires longer than I had been alive at the point when I reached them. This is not metaphor: the monastery I am thinking of had records going back centuries before my birth, records of dynasties that...