There are worse places to drive than Italy. But for yours truly, a few thousand clicks up and down the roads of the boot, earlier this month, proved enough of a challenge to satisfy my urge for merit badges for a while. A search for Hannibal and Caesar took Marcia and me on a two-week driving trip from Milan to …

Some battlefields state their message plainly, like Gettysburg. Others cry out their pain, like Verdun. But most, I suspect, say absolutely nothing. They are just fields or groves or shopping malls, silent about their bloody past. Cannae is one of those. The site of the greatest battlefield of the ancient world, the place where Hannibal slaughtered 50,000 Romans in an …

My kids are past the age for family outings to the fireworks display. I’m not much for crowds myself, so this Fourth of July I stayed home and set off fireworks for the soul. I re-read the Declaration of Independence. I love the Declaration for many reasons, and not least because it declares. No “on the one hand, on the …