Paul Collins

Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck, leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity....

The first popular narrative history of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the world’s most obsessively pursued book, The Book of William recounts the book’s remarkable journey....

Paul Collins travels the globe piecing together the missing body and soul of one of our most enigmatic founding fathers: Thomas Paine....

When Paul Collins’s son Morgan was two years old, he could read, spell, and perform multiplication tables in his head … but not answer to his own name....

On November 23, 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city's richest men vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston's West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School....

Today the name Edgar Allan Poe invokes a tragic genius whose mastery of horror seems inexorably tied to his tormented life....

In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic, its uncertain future contested by the two major political parties of the day....

In Long Island, a farmer found a duck pond turned red with blood....