Its administrators. But the university nestled in North Philadelphia as it’s known today is largely a result of its seventh commander-in-chief, Peter Liacouras. The 80-year-old chancellor is perhaps the most influential leader of the university to come...

Mr. Hoban never stopped writing; in all he wrote dozens of children’s books and a shelf full of novels. His other noted books included “Turtle Diary” (1975), whose characters try to release turtles from a zoo, and “Pilgermann” (1983), about a eunuch on...

Walker was very difficult to live up to, but it didn't quite do enough to set him up." As Hoban himself put it: "I was on a whole other level for six months or a year, then my next novel, Pilgermann, made a front-page review – but it was only half a page.

The lecture came to be known as “Acres of Diamonds”, and Conwell went on to turn his nightly mission meetings into Temple University. He also went on to deliver that lecture over 6,000 times. Fast forwarding a century to our own Great Recession and its...