When news of Lepanto arrived in Rome, the Pope exclaimed, “Now Lord, you can take your servant, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” The battle’s outcome gratified the pontiff, but it may not have surprised him. Legend holds that, at the moment the Turkish admiral was slain on his quarterdeck, Pius V had sensed,...
Venezuela, once the beauty queen of Latin American democracies, has lost her good looks. Today, the oil-rich country is more often compared with communist Cuba than with democratic Costa Rica. Venezuela’s dramatic fall from grace has many causes, but most would blame Hugo Chávez Frias, her president since 1998 and, today, Latin America’s most successful...
Jean-Paul Sartre called him the era’s most perfect man. The students of 1968 used his name as the watchword for their revolution. He was Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the communist revolutionary who was executed 40 years ago by CIA-led Bolivian rangers after trying to start another Vietnam in South America. Since he died, his image has...