Dr. Robert Zaller

Essays, Reviews & Commentary

The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England
“Monumental…a vast exercise in the history of ideas.”
Alexandra GajdaJournal of British Studies
The Discourse of Legitimacy
“Massive and massively learned . . . [an] enormous achievement.”
Janelle GreenbergThe Journal of Modern History
Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime
“The best single critical book about Jeffers…”
Albert GelpiCoe Professor Emeritus, Stanford University
Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime
“Sure to become a mainstay of Jeffers studies…”
Josh WeinsteinJournal of American Literature
The Cliffs of Solitude
“A triumph of great criticism.”
Whitney HothFanshawe College Ontario
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    • Is a Two-Party Solution Possible in the U.S.?
    • The Real Forever War: Israel and the Palestinians
    • Daughter of the Revolution: The Conscience of Liz Cheney
    • Democracy and the Sixth Great Extinction
    • What Does a Fair Trial Cost?
    • Why Inequality Matters
    • Our Broken Polity, and How To Fix It
    • Where is the Migrant Crisis Leading Us?
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    • Edgar and Clyde: A Love Story
    • Blue Jasmine: Woody Does Tennessee Williams
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    • Early and Late Beethoven, with Fauré
    • From Vienna to Budapest: The Marlboro Musicians Perform
    • In Memoriam: Michael Tilson Thomas Conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra
    • The Quartet That Changed It All
    • Two Quintets, with Haydn in Between: The Aizuri Quartet and Pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn
    • Love Above All: Opera Philadelphia’s La Traviata
  • Greece
    • The Fourth Great Crisis: Greece in the Summer of 2016
    • After the Brexit: What Next for Greece?
    • Endgame for the Grexit, or More of the Same?
    • It’s Time for Greece to Leave the Reich
  • About Robert Zaller
HomeArt

Art

Nancy Herman Painting
Art

Nancy Herman: Totems

December 6, 2022 Robert Zaller 0

The major part of Nancy Herman’s small but select show at her gallery in Narberth covers a single long wall, but it says a great deal about looking, and the how and why of what [ Read Article ]

Robert Richenburg: Energy Stream
Art

A Strong Place: Robert Richenburg at the Findlay Gallery

December 6, 2022 Robert Zaller 0

The story of American Abstract Expressionism in its mid-twentieth century heyday seems a settled one, at least as far as its major figures are concerned: Rothko, Gorky, de Kooning, Newman, Still, Pollock, Guston, Kline, and [ Read Article ]

Art

Shafts of Light, Slants of Dark: Nancy Herman Paintings at the Cosmopolitan Club

June 25, 2018 Robert Zaller 0

Nancy Clearwater Herman is perhaps best known for her large, richly complex quilts and hangings. The present exhibit at the Cosmopolitan Club shows another aspect of her art. The mostly small oil paintings on display [ Read Article ]

Art

Poor Richard, Poor Donald: Philip Guston’s Timely Show at Hauser & Wirth

January 11, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

There isn’t a timelier art exhibit anywhere at the moment than the show of Philip Guston’s suite of drawings about Richard Nixon and his era now on display at Hauser & Wirth’s new gallery on [ Read Article ]

Art

“An Idiot, an Imbecile, and a Pickpocket”: Francis Picabia at the Museum of Modern Art

January 11, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

Francis Picabia (1879-1953), born in Paris to a French mother and a Cuban father, was an exact contemporary of Pablo Picasso and a close one of Braque and Léger. His painterly skill and pictorial imagination [ Read Article ]

Art

One Strange Dude: Piero di Cosimo at the National Gallery of Art

October 13, 2016 Robert Zaller 0

Giorgio Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters, describes Piero di Cosimo as a man who lived “in the strangeness of his mind,” beset by fears that were also compulsions—his pyrophobia was so intense, Vasari [ Read Article ]

Recent Articles

  • American flag on broken walls.

    Democracy Gets a Reprieve

    December 6, 2022 0
  • Nancy Herman Painting

    Nancy Herman: Totems

    December 6, 2022 0
  • Robert Richenburg: Energy Stream

    A Strong Place: Robert Richenburg at the Findlay Gallery

    December 6, 2022 0
  • Broken egg and yolk.

    Where American Democracy Is Now

    December 5, 2022 0
  • Daughter of the Revolution: The Conscience of Liz Cheney

    June 4, 2021 0
  • The Real Forever War: Israel and the Palestinians

    June 4, 2021 0
  • American flag on broken walls.

    Is a Two-Party Solution Possible in the U.S.?

    June 4, 2021 0
  • Donald Trump Is Leaving Office with a Holocaust

    January 3, 2021 0
  • The Man Who Came to Dinner

    September 29, 2020 0
  • Flag projected on Donald Trumps face.

    On Living in a Pariah Nation

    July 25, 2020 0

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About the Author

Dr. Robert Zaller is an American author, playwright, and professor of history at Drexel University. An authority on British political history and constitutional thought, he writes extensively on politics, modern literature, film, music and art. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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