devotion
Did it all for someone — or something — and never wavered.
The Bandleader From Saturn
What does a man who insists he was sent here from Saturn do when NASA rejects his application?
The System of One
What happens when the man who proved no system is complete builds one with a single trusted element?
The Smell of Sin
What does it take for a 13th-century shepherdess to become the patron saint of psychiatrists eight hundred years later?
The Architect Who Wore a Sailor's Coat
Who designs the gilded ceilings of British democracy in pilot trousers and jack-boots, then sails out to pull drowning men from the Goodwin Sands?
The Painter Who Painted the Room
She started on Masonite, then cookie sheets, then scallop shells, then the breadbox — and then she ran out of small things.
A House for Foss
A Victorian poet built a second house identical to his first, same rooms, same floor plan, so his cat wouldn't feel disoriented.
The Man Who Was Grimaldi
What does it cost a man to teach the world how to fall down for a living?
Minding the Heavens
What does it take for an 18th-century woman, raised in a kitchen, to become the first person ever paid by the British Crown for science?
The Butterflies of the Soul
He won the 1906 Nobel Prize for proving the brain is built from separate cells. He found out by drawing them, on an ink-stained tablecloth, for fifty years.
The Boy in the Garden
A country doctor famous for birds made two small cuts in his gardener's eight-year-old son — and then did it again, and again, for years.
The Long Walk Home
In 1841 a celebrated English poet walked out of his asylum and covered eighty miles in four days, eating grass and his own pipe tobacco, to reach a childhood sweetheart he was certain was waiting for him.
The Man Who Fed His Foot to Worms
What do you do when worms keep falling out of the ulcer on your foot, fifty feet above the ground, and you've been standing on a pillar for thirty-seven years?