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Morris Bishop, the man who arranged for Vladimir Nabokov’s job at Cornell, and eventually became his best friend, begins his biography of Blaise Pascal by writing, “Blaise Pascal was, simply, one of the greatest men that have ever lived.” The abbé Jean Steinman, in his 1954 study of Pascal, claimed that “outside the Bible there

What is the essence of a diplomat’s charm? Perfect manners infused with personal warmth; self-confidence leavened by self-deprecation; a fund of anecdote that never degenerates into gossip; an ability to drop names, not obnoxiously but just enough to make the listener feel they’re getting the inside track; a little more erudition than you expect; a

There is perhaps no issue on Capitol Hill that brokers less agreement than policies to address climate change. On the left, doom-forecasters and activists claim the planet will be irreparably broken without major action, requiring the government to change everything from the cars we drive to the number of indigenous women employed to build the