Tom Verde

Freelance Writer

Pawcatuck, CT

Freelance Journalist, specializing in Religion/Culture/History M.A. Islamic Studies & Christian-Muslim Relations

Tom Verde

Freelance Writer

Pawcatuck, CT

Freelance Journalist, specializing in Religion/Culture/History M.A. Islamic Studies & Christian-Muslim Relations

When Books Were Handmade
In the early 1070s, the monk Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to St. Anselm, abbot of Bec in Normandy, seeking a significant favor: he wanted to borrow a book. Two, actually. The volumes Lanfranc sought comprised the Moralia in Job, a commentary
Commonweal
Adventurous, Dangerous And Revolting: Seeing ‘The World Through Medieval Eyes’
(REVIEW) In the late 15th century, Martin Behaim, a German cloth merchant, traveler and navigator from Nuremberg, commissioned one of the earliest known examples of a globe. A wealthy man from a family of well-to-do merchants, Behaim made his own fortune
Religion Unplugged
Medieval Chefs Would Have Liked Dessert Hummus
Recipes in Arabic cookbooks included everything from rose hips to cinnamon. May 21, 2024 In American grocery stores, brownie or snickerdoodle hummus is a common sight. Brent Hofacker/Alamy Last summer, Sabra, one of America’s leading producers of hummus,
Atlas Obscura
A Church Against Science?
Perhaps the most famous image in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, painted around 1511, is The Creation of Adam, the moment when God is a divine breath away from imparting life to Adam with the near touch of their outstretched fingers. Yet before God created
Commonweal
Remapping Jerusalem
In 1896 the Lumière brothers, French pioneers of motion pictures, traveled to Jerusalem, then part of the Ottoman Empire, to film scenes of daily life. In the soundtrack to the remarkable footage (added later, as it was not technically possible to record
Commonweal
2022 Innovator: Rev. Dr. Shelley Best uses faith and art to help raise Hartford’s profile
The walls of Rev. Dr. Shelley Best’s office at the Greater Hartford Arts Council are lined with her own artwork and prayers, which, in her estimation, amount to the same thing. “When I paint, I pray,” says Best, pastor of the Redeemer’s A.M.E. (African Me
Hartford Business Journal
Thanksgiving Is a year-round practice of giving thanks
When the Pilgrims sat down to what some regard as the first Thanksgiving four hundred years ago in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, they hardly had the market cornered on giving thanks. For local Wampanoags, and Indigenous people throughout North Am
NPR
The New York of Anthony Jansen van Salee
The narrow, rectangular lot pressed between 25 and 31 Bridge Street in Lower Manhattan sits empty save for a few precious parking spaces and a row of dumpsters. A nail salon advertises services on one side, while the White Horse restaurant has bracketed the other since 1641. Across the street, on the ground floor of a steel-and-glass skyscraper, a more modern eatery offers office workers, here in the heart of New York’s Financial District, business lunches to go.
AramcoWorld
How a Librarian and a Food Historian Rediscovered the Recipes of Moorish Spain
A new cookbook is a translation of a rare, 13th-century volume. “Take large fine-tasting carrots, lightly scrape their skins, cut them in half lengthwise, and then split each half into two pieces.” For centuries, that’s as far as any cook could get when p
Gastro Obscura
Egyptian Blue
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. PURCHASE, EDWARD S. HARKNESS GIFT, 1926. ACC. NO. 26.7.860
Nile Magazine
The Quest for Blue
It’s easy to think of blue as a naturally pervasive color. It’s all around us in clear skies and bodies of water. Yet elsewhere blue appears infrequently, coloring only a handful of minerals and less than 10 percent of flowering plants. Even the feathers of birds, from blue jays to bluebirds, are not truly blue but the result of a biologically sophisticated trick of the eye.
AramcoWorld
The Dialogues of Don Quixote
Four centuries later, I wandered the labyrinthine streets of Toledo’s old quarter and ended up, like most pedestrians, in the Alcaná, a name that comes from the Arabic al-janat, meaning “the (market) stands.”. It is still a bustling center of commerce, and a plaque, inconspicuously tucked beneath a second story window, commemorates the spot’s connection to Don Quixote.
AramcoWorld
As Plastic Fills the Ocean, Artist Finds Source of Inspiration
Wracklines
The Prized Pepper That Comes From a Single New Mexican Town
Nearly 300,000 pilgrims travel annually to Chimayó—a rural community nestled in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, about 40 minutes north of Santa Fe—to visit the town’s famed Santuario de Chimayó. They come to worship at the early-19th century, adobe church
Gastro Obscura
Cairo’s House of Knowledge
On March 24, 1005, a man reputed for madness came to his senses long enough to establish one of the most progressive and influential academic institutions of the Middle Ages. “On this Saturday ... the so-called House of Knowledge in Cairo was inaugurated,” wrote the chronicler al-Musabbihi, a friend of the new institution’s founder, Caliph al-Hakim, who had assumed his title nine years before.
AramcoWorld
The Long Journey of the Aleppo Pepper
Early in the seven-year-old Syrian civil war, American imports of Syria’s signature dried, ground Aleppo chiles dropped drastically. The spice-trading city of the same name, where the fresh pepper was traditionally grown and processed, has been devastated in the fighting, which has destroyed lives and livelihoods.
The New York Times

About

Tom Verde

Editing

Writing

Curriculum Development

Lecturing

Specialties: Islam, Middle Eastern history, interfaith relations and dialogue, early Christian history, and comparative religion. Have written and published extensively on religion, culture, the environment, and travel in major national and international publications (New York Times, Boston Globe, AramcoWorld, Biblical Archeology, National Geographic Adventure, Travel & Leisure, Wildlife Conservation, et. al.) as well as broadcast networks including NPR, Public Radio International and the BBC. Worked with the British Council, the Social Science Research Council, and the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University to develop a secondary school curriculum entitled "Our Shared Past in the Mediterranean." Awards include: Association for Communications Excellence; Religion News Association Award for Excellence in Religion News Analysis and Magazine Writing; New York Festivals, National Headliner, and National Federation of Community Broadcasters awards; Clarion Award, National Federation of Press Women, and Connecticut Press Club Communications Contest; Folio Award for "Best Single Article."