Charlemagne and The Sopranos, Trump and I, Claudius – all owe a debt to the imperial biographies of Suetonius.

Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, had been commemorated by the Romans as the first and greatest of their emperors: a ruler who laid the vast edifice of Roman power on such solid and splendid ...

“You cannot pause a plane in midflight and expect that everything is going to be O.K.,” Gawande says. “That’s what they were trying to do with lifesaving health and humanitarian assistance ...