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Articles of Note“I couldn’t put it down.” It was, uh, “magisterial.” Or, “wickedly funny.” As for Tom Payne’s guide to reviewese, it’s “a searing indictment!”... more» Mongolia or Borneo were once real adventures. Now they even have Web access. The landscape of the mind is the last terra incognita... more» Islamic democracy is what the politically correct call Turkey. But its democracy is no more Islamic than Canada’s is Christian... more» Every time the Olympics alters its venue, millions of staff-hours of organizing know-how are lost. It’s time the games got a permanent home... more» Like chimps, but with a more deadly refinement, human beings harness altruism and solidarity to wage war... more» Overworked? Bone-tired? Hey, get yourself a job in Europe! You can unwind and enjoy those endless vacations. Niall Ferguson explains... more» A three-hour film based on the work of Martin Heidegger is not likely to pack out theatres. But Finnish TV has picked it up. That’s a start... more» “I am sick of nature,” says David Gessner. “Sick of trees, sick of birds, sick of the ocean.” And tired of dull, pious nature writing... more» Welcome to Castro’s gulag: Cuba, the country where Neighborhood Watch takes on a whole new meaning. Eric Umansky reports... more» Has Wahhabism been getting unfair press? Is it actually free from xenophobia and misogyny? Yes, says one scholar... more» “Without a Kalashnikov you’re trash,” goes the saying in Sudan. It’s a brutal way to bring the Arabist agenda into force... more» For progressives it was a sensible way to modernize the German language. For others it was state-ordered dyslexia... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» Consciousness organizes itself in line with evolution: no divide between matter and soul, no spooks in the protoplasm... more» Sidney Morgenbesser was the echte Jewish philosopher, down to his account of Jewish logic: “If P, so why not Q?”... more» ... more» Paul Fussell describes the real texture of war: the cold, lice, rotten food, mutilations, and murders. With a literary eye... more» We shop, therefore we are. It’s not exactly the American credo, but it comes close to being a national pastime, says Robert Samuelson... more» Walter Benjamin knew the streets of Paris. In the end, he found himself hiking on a path to nowhere. His steps can be retraced today... more» To succeed on TV, the party conventions need to take place on a single night with a phone-in poll to win the nomination: White House Idol!... more» The overpopulation myth has such enduring appeal. Who doesn’t love a simple, easily graspable idea that seems to explain so much?... more» What is dark energy? Can we fit black hole evaporation into quantum mechanics? Do extra dimensions exist? The big questions of physics... more» Louis de Branges may not be a crank, but he is cranky. So if he has made the greatest math discovery of the last century... more» Francis Crick, who helped discover the double helix shape of DNA, has died... San Diego Union ... BBC ... NY Times The U.S. complains that China is undemocratic; Chinese call the U.S. hegemonic: powers on a collision course... more» Managing ethnic diversity is costly, but worth it: many of the world’s richest countries are the most culturally varied... more»
Déjà vu has for long lain in the “interesting but insoluble” box. It’s recently been roused by new theories... more» Helena Rubinstein, Estée Lauder, and Elizabeth Arden: the short, hyper-ambitous, social climbing czarinas of beauty... more» Believers often show stigmata, bleeding from their palms. Odd that they never manifest the gaping spear wound in Jesus’ side... more» Little Johnny trying to force square pegs into round holes? Hey, he’s got dyspraxia, the hot, new dyslexia!... more» The Freedom Vote project did energize the 1964 Democratic convention. But southern whites bolted, never looking back... more» You read your conference talk aloud a hundred times, but on the day it never quite goes to plan... more» Che Guevara, screenprint star of a million posters and t-shirts, is about to hit pay-dirt with his own road movie...more» Anti-smoking messages may have saved millions of lives. Now the quitters eat too much, raising the obesity death toll... more» Olympians just competed in Athens in the calculus and algebra events. Okay, but is math really a sport?... more» Egypt has banned music videos showing women’s navels. As recently as I Dream of Jeannie, the U.S. did the same... more» Paranormal beliefs are found in every society. Getting rid of them is a fine idea, but would cultures survive without them?... more» The naturalistic skill of the Great Masters was aided by magnifying glasses and concave mirrors. Were they cheating?... more» The world’s only truly great post-war opera is about a loner, sadist, pedophile, and worse. Who was this Peter Grimes?... more» Wills pass on our wealth to loved ones. But should we try to dictate “ethical wills” to pass on our values?... more» Poetry, once hugely popular, is now an esoteric pastime. Novels are set to follow. The big, new idea is graphic novels... more» Pulse, breathing, and voice can be controlled. But how to beat a lie detector test that scans the brain itself?... more» The wholesale plagiarism of a Ph.D. thesis is bad enough. Worse, it shows how easy it is to fool the academic system... more» They admit Josef Stalin was a monster. But Russians still crave a “good, strict father,” says Viktor Yerofeyev... more» After sex, the female hides in her new shell. Her old shell becomes a postcoital snack for the male. It’s lobster life... more» Sunblock for fair skin. Inhalers for asthmatics. Has natural selection been overcome by human intervention?... more» “I see water and the number seven.” Ah, yes. But in fact, no police psychic has ever actually solved a crime... more» It makes disturbing reading, in case anybody bothers to read it. A new study shows Americans read less and less... more» ... more» ... the report. Brian Greene’s romantic vision of an “elegant” and “beautiful” universe is sure charming. But is it good science?... more» Strategy and technology will not alone win every war. Killing enough people often does. In defense of attrition... more» Can the reconstruction of car accidents really show whether the driver and passenger were having sex?... more» Pablo Neruda: senator, poet, diplomat, and communist “tried to capture the universe in a single book”... more» ... more» Directors routinely smash huge cities, armies, and planets with the aid of computers. What about close-ups?... more» Its odd script and bizarre images have long puzzled experts. Could Voynich’s manuscript actually be a hoax?... more» It was long held that one had to be virtuous to be happy. Then Americans made happiness itself a virtue... more» Between religion and politics, is there room for an ethical view of the war in Iraq? Peter Singer wonders... more» Health? Crime? Lost luggage? After years of unmet promises, computer power now allows operations research to solve many practical problems... more» Cosmetic surgery is a kind of democratic solution to an undemocratic problem: the uneven distribution of beauty... more» Lights! Camera! Insight! Positioning faculty for “media hits” has become a lucrative business: fame, fortune, and tenure too... more» Safety first, but at what cost? The precautionary principle seems a good idea, but sometimes a little risk is a lot safer... more» A vigorous economic performance and growing population aren’t enough to ward off the coming decline of Australian relative power... more» The horrors of trench warfare made mighty heroes of plastic surgeons. Oh, how the mighty have fallen... more» Atonality in music is a problem for listeners. It is like a play whose characters keep changing their identities... more» When people knock golden age thinking, the past is not usually their target. It is the ideals and aspirations of the past they want to trash... more» Jonathan Swift’s dictum that “you do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into” conveys a deep idea. Think of religion... more» Shifting power. If India keeps to its current growth rate for 50 years, it will overtake China. And where will the West be then?... more» Land art: enduring, cosmic monuments to nature and the human spirit, or just empty monuments to artistic ego?... more» Sad people are nice. Angry people are nasty. And, oddly, happy people are nasty, too. Jim Holt on the case against happiness... more» Mark Twain’s first Turkish bath was terrible, devoid of the elegance of literary accounts. Yet another travel disappointment... more» Coleridge was tormented by it, Valéry took 20 years off, Rimbaud just gave up. What happens to writers when words won’t come?... more» Sir Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza scholar, philosopher of freedom and morality, is dead... Telegraph ... Guardian ... Alan Ryan Don’t assume Islam alone is the cause of sexual inequality in the Arab world. Consider divorce, child custody, and polygamy in Morocco... more» Critics in Mozart’s age threw up their hands at the dark Don Giovanni, calling it perverse, amoral. These days, such qualities turn us on... more» “Go missing,” “sell-by date,” and “end of the day” paved the way for “run-up.” U.S. use of such Briticisms is not always “spot-on”... more» “I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” Is Ulysses a great book? Yes it is Yes. Michael Blowhard, Stephen Schwartz, Jon Wilson, Tim Cavanaugh, John Moore, Andrew Martin, Economist, The Age, Bert Archer, Richard West, David Robinson, Andrew Conn, Michael Dirda, Edmund Wilson (1922) Leo Strauss’s ideas are a kind of virus in the American body politic, with a fearful liberalism now absorbing his hostility to democracy... more» Thomas Frank/David Brooks: are they talking to you or about you, laughing with you or at you? You’ll have to decide for yourself... more» Eisenhower wanted “Atoms for Peace” to use atomic energy for medicine and power, to help the world’s poor. “Right on!” says Iran... more» ... more» Even Ronald Reagan’s most bitter critics were disarmed by his warmth: Fred Turner, Lech Walesa, Baroness Thatcher, Tevi Troy, WSJ, Frank Devine, Natan Sharansky, David Gelernter, Christopher Hitchens Democratic Iraq in 24 months? It’s sheer fantasy, says Niall Ferguson. Ten years, and untold billions of dollars, would be more like it... more» Leave sexy rags, booze, and porn at home. Expat existence in Saudi Arabia is not life as we know it, but it offers less obvious rewards... more» |
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New BooksA Devil’s Dictionary for our day: staff of McSweeney’s go into the future with a first-aid kit, hammer, and Burnt Icicle nail polish... more» Edward Said was keen to attack ignorance and tribalism in the Arab world. Other critics of the Arabs were, of course, always wrong... more» Terry Eagleton’s prose is full of platitudinous moralizing, silly similes, cheap nihilism, and off-the-peg Oedipal complexes... more» Dmitry Mendeleyev was able to predict new elements with his great Periodic Table. Alas, he could not predict social events... more» Language is the oldest and still smartest human technology. Nothing beats it in power and sophistication... more» Canadian youth tend to see the U.S. as a menace. This news will surprise no one who looks at the history textbooks they are fed... more» Rodney Dangerfield has his ways: “Try to make people like you. If they do, you can get a big laugh with a mediocre joke”... more» Napoleon’s fatal 1812 march on Moscow. Few historic events have been as much obscured by ideology... more» “People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” Jorge Luis Borges preferred it to everyone except Mother... more» Atheism envisioned a glorious future for a humanity freed from religion. It has not happened yet, and maybe... more» Food is more than just fuel: it is polysaturated with culture. Consider haggis, hot dogs, Big Macs, or chicken soup... more» “A book is a mirror. If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.” G.C. Lichtenberg dug deeper than anyone... more» Whether applied to Bosnia and Vermeer or Parkinson’s disease and furniture design, Lawrence Weschler’s curiosity is intense and protean... more» The rise of special interests in Washington gave bureaucrats an easy substitute for public approval. Voters? Who needs them?... more» Roger Penrose starts with the simple stuff – Greek geometry. Anyone can follow him from there to a grasp of quantum gravity. He thinks... more» Osip Mandelstam wrote of “huge laughing cockroaches” on Stalin’s top lip, “the glitter of his boot-rims.” The poem was a death sentence... more» Truth is stranger than fiction since it need not be consistent. Is there a truth revealed by placing Henry James in a fiction?... more» The Left can only win by losing its contempt for the unhip and the God-fearing. It must be for working people, blemishes and all... more» Humans and animals alike talk about the same things every day: sex, real estate, food, who’s boss. Maybe... more» Americans aren’t cowboys and Europeans are not wimps, says Timothy Garton Ash. Both are deeply on the side of freedom... more» Falsehood wrapped in a crust of confusion and served with dollops of nonsense. It doesn’t get much worse than Hardt and Negri’s latest... more» Hugh Hefner claims to have slept with “thousands of women – and they still like me.” How would he know?... more» Rebecca Schroeter is a little known 18th-century daughter of a merchant. But she’ll earn fame as Haydn’s lover... more» If women want men to do their fair share, they have to insist on it. No use to make other women do the work... more» Americans see high-school dramatics as part of teens’ social ed. To the rest of the world, it looks torturous... more» Both saw themselves as men of science: for Stalin and Hitler Marxist and racist “iron laws” ruled development... more» Galvanism was discovered when a dissected frog’s legs twitched when they touched iron. Serendipity... more» Fermented grapes were being drunk in the Pleistocene. The origins of wine may yet show us the advent of civilization... more» People find real beauty in the building and garden of the Getty Museum. Why not its parking lot?... more» For Oz to find its way, every white person needs to sit down before a mirror, saying, “I live in an Aboriginal country”... more» Anti-globalists think of export belts as sheer exploitation. Better than farming for $1 a day, says Martin Wolf... more» Andover, Yale, military pilot, oil, politics: he always came up short. But maybe George W. does the everyman act better... more» They were “young, trim, tall, literate, with jet black skin.” In the family history of almost every successful African American, there’s a Pullman porter... more» The banality of evil was an easy idea: he who committed the most evil deeds might not have a wicked heart... more» A lightbulb goes on in the brain of a chimp, and he uses a pole to get at a banana. How does the behaviorist explain that?... more» As a naive 22 year old, Traudl Junge was appointed Hitler’s secretary, taking dictation from the dictator... more» A culture of fear once pervaded the FBI. J.Edgar Hoover had the dirt on everyone from gangsters to presidents... more» We may revile rats, but trouble in the rat population foretells trouble in our own, says Erica Barnett... more» ... more» Before the days of the tabloids, royal mistresses weren’t just tolerated. They rivaled prime ministers in status... more» Britain exploited its colonies but gave back roads, museums, water, religion. What did Russia give back? Not much, said Anton Chekhov... more» Gertrude Himmelfarb rejects theory, be it based in class, politics, or postmodernism. But can history do without it?... more» Traditionalism wages a war in which modernity is the enemy. It must destroy democracy to restore lost wisdom... more» Queen Nefertiti had a way with roast chickens, ripping them apart, nary a knife or napkin in sight. She loved a feast... more» When the Queen first appeared on the chessboard, she could only move to adjacent diagonal squares. How did she become its center of power?... more» Radical feminists “spout bogus science and silence their critics with vicious tirades.” Neil Boyd wants a fight... more» Even if income is doled out by merit or value of skills, we would still need to give the worst off a decent standard of living... more» “Tell all” autobiographies rarely do that, especially when they’re politicians’. What do we really know about Clinton’s “dark places”?... more» There is something fragile and moving at the core of W.B. Yeats’s arduous foolishness. It may not be heroic, but it is deeply human... more» If bad governments make for many of the world’s problems, state-building could be the fix, says Francis Fukuyama... more» ... more» The study of primitive peoples was an armchair pursuit, until Malinowsky made a break into the field... more» Tribal warfare on the playing field: if soccer’s a mirror on the globe, it reflects one that’s far from globalized... more» ... more» From the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great to Xi’an terracottas to Stubbs’s oils: know horses, know history... more» Robbed of all certainty, the sinner for Martin Luther could find no place to go in anguish except to the God of mercy and of grace... more» A professional cyclist can expect to live barely 50 years. The Tour de France is the most savagely difficult race of all... more» All bets are on: when’s the next terrorist attack? Will cellular life be found on Mars? Can the prediction markets predict?... more» Rick Moody, wrote Dale Peck, “has never put together a single sentence I would call indispensable.” The ax man cometh... more» ... more» Suicide killing needs something else besides a body: poisoned daggers, kamikaze planes, explosive belts, boxcutters... more» The U.S. soldier abuse at Abu Ghraib? Little different to new recruit hazing games, suggests Niall Ferguson... more» Submarines promised an end to naval warfare. In reality they’re stinking hulks, capable only of drive-by hits... more» James Wood’s criticism, fresh and open-eyed, is as far as it can be from the turgid jargon-laden world of literary theory... more» Himmler still had not come on the idea of the Final Solution in 1940. To murder the Jews Bolshevik-style was “un-German”... more» A bitterness in the land of Toto and tornadoes means that Republicans get all the votes. Thomas Frank asks why... more» What do you make of a guide to proper comma usage that can’t seem to get its own commas right? Is this book a hoax?... more» ... more» Alain de Botton has a perfect recipe. Take high literature, season with deep philosophy, and bake into a middlebrow self-help book... more» The young Tolstoy – gambler and wastrel – was confronted by the old. Between these human poles lies great art. Cynthia Ozick explains... more» Even in exile, he was feared as an ogre of subversion. Today we can more clearly see Trotsky as a prophet... more» Napoleon wished to be king, Washington was happy not to be. French leaders, more than U.S. ones, show an imperial temperament... more» Bush’s reelection would ratify the revolutionary changes he has brought to U.S. foreign policy. Whether this is a good thing... more» The demise of the soul seems exaggerated. The mind-body problem is still with us, and until science resolves it, the idea of the soul persists... more» Serbs slit throats, mashed skulls, gutted pregnant women. And who helped provoke it all? A roofer in Brooklyn... more» Why has the U.S. never had a decent system of child care? One feminist answer, “dumb men, stupid choices,” is long overdue ... more» Testimony: a pitiful fake, a slander on the people who nurtured Shostakovich, the people he composed for? Maybe not... more» Historians are either truffle hunters, noses buried in detail, or parachutists, with a view from on high. David Christian is a parachutist... more» Evelyn Waugh’s travel writing is not about travel, but about polished boredom, macabre curiosity, endless prejudices... more» Australian philosophy: it’s a world of Marxists, hard-line materialists, gamblers, and poets manqués... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» | |
Essays and OpinionPalestinian Christian suicide bombers don’t exist. Nor are there Tibetan suicide bombers. Political oppression is not the problem. Religion is... more» ... more» Despite centuries of progress in economic theory since Adam Smith, people still refuse to behave logically in economic contexts. Why, dammit, why?... more» You gave me gifts, God-Enchanter. I give you thanks for good and ill. Eternal light in everything on earth. As now, so on the day of my death. Czeslaw Milosz, 1911 - 2004... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... NPR audio. Bernard Lane wrote of Milosz the day before he died. Edward Elgar’s music had for some an “almost intolerable air of smugness, self-assurance, and autocratic benevolence.” The perfect, boring Victorian... more» 
Buy the paperback from Barnes & Noble or Amazon When academics talk about “the Greeks” they never mean Melina Mercouri, but only people who lived 2000 years ago. Even a Cyclops could see something’s wrong here... more» A gorgeous spectacle: mart, court, hive of industry where people meet, laugh, marry, die, paint, write and act. Virginia Woolf’s lost essay on London... more» Conferences on French national identity now outnumber striptease shows in Paris. It’s France’s summer of discontent... more» Plus, there’s that wine problem. Why not just loaf? If only academics had the wit and nerve to honor style: taking pleasure in the craft of writing and allowing their audiences to find joy in reading. If only... more» Terrorism, all agreed 30 years ago, was a left-wing revolutionary shift caused by oppression. Fix the evil and no more terrorism. That was then, now is now... more» Tom Hodgkinson wants love, sex, anarchy, booze, cigarettes, and freedom. Some would call his idea of life idle, mere laziness. Hey, he agrees... more» The angel and devil that sit on the shoulders of Americans: the desire for material wealth and feelings of guilt about it. Why do we worry so much?.. more» Exercises in “guided fantasy” and “sensitivity training” have replaced memorization in the classroom to free children for creativity. What an empty freedom... more» Why encourage reading? Well, uh, we need informed citizens to have democracy. And, uh, reading conveys knowledge! It gives us the bounty of the past! And, uh... more» High levels of Hispanic immigration and low rates of assimilation could change the U.S. into a land of two languages, two peoples, says Samuel Huntington... more» What inspires disgust in the very idea of male homosexuality is a fear of anal penetration: stickiness, ooze, and death. A bad basis for law... more» ... more» The late style. Artists tend toward a spirit of reconciliation and serenity in the works of their old age, argues Edward Said in his last essay... more» A country’s literature is a kind of foreign policy, an expression of personality. Why don’t the British take more interest in the European literary carnival around them?... more» Carbon dioxide isn’t the only familiar item of nature to be vilified in recent years. There’s also that nearby star of death and disease, a.k.a. the sun... more» The New York Times’s “Portraits of Grief” aimed to highlight the 9/11 victims as a distinct personalities. Instead, it trivialized them... more» No recent invention has done more to cheapen and degrade the art of music than the Sony Walkman. That day it was born was the day music began to die... more» Forget about the Iraq war. The roots of anti-Americanism go deeper into questions of wealth and who has it, power and who exercises it... more» In 1985, a young, scruffy, idealistic Joschka Fischer became Germany’s environment minister. In the end he has betrayed his supporters... more» Money doesn’t buy happiness. Sure, but money can buy time: a shorter commute, more leisure, more rest. And that can make for happiness. ... more» Hundreds of Indian Muslim women have been raped and killed by Hindus whose beliefs owe a lot, says Martha Nussbaum, to European fascism... more» Famous mainly in the West, and only because he was a Stalinist at the right moment, Pablo Neruda was both a bad poet and a bad man... more» Private firms have a big say in military budgets, foreign policy, and war. This is now normal, admits John Kenneth Galbraith, but it remains hidden... more» Exposing fraudulent contests, naming the sycophants, just cleaning house: it’s Foetry, the “poetry watchdog”... more» Cultural wasteland, economic nightmare, outlaw, parasite, pariah. That’s America, in some European eyes. Bruce Bawer explains... more» Well-armed but diplomatic, industrious but green, Europe may be the world’s first metrosexual superpower. Parag Khanna explains... more» “The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula,” said Bush snr. Yet the ghosts of past wars haunt us... more» Bobby Fischer’s was a fragile mind that lost its way once he gave up chess. Garry Kasparov on the sad decline of a chess genius... more» Joe Millionaire, Theodor Adorno, eyebrow dandruff. And Judith Butler, of course. Just another annual meeting of the MLA... more» A goal of vengeance makes for a tough political battle: “It’s foolish to fight people who want death; that’s what they are looking for”... more» With enough grunting and pointing, cavemen got “the gist.” It’s no standard for spelling and grammar, argues Lynne Truss... more» Celebrity architecture has created a desire for ever more iconic buildings. But what does the “Bilbao effect” really add to a city?... more» Michael Moore plays at politics, and quite brilliantly. But in his self-love he evades being held to real political standards... more» Alarm over American jobs lost offshore should be tempered by the hard facts about trade. Brink Lindsey has ten of them... more» High school English teacher Wilmer Stone read his students’ stories and poems aloud in a dull monotone. It helped drive James Baldwin to write a masterpiece... more» A credibility problem has made the U.S. government an “axis of disorder.” Will getting rid of the neo-cons be the fix?... more» Dale Peck insists his attacks aren’t personal: “If Rick Moody stabbed me in an alley, and I didn’t like his book, one doesn’t necessarily abrogate the other”... more» Take away differences in money, age, religion, and geography, and what remains of the common experience of motherhood?... more» His sympathy for the Palestinian cause earned him the “Professor of Terror” tag. Yet Edward Said was less a radical than a “rootless cosmopolitan”... more» For the post-war Left, American history is little more than a litany of misdeeds. This view now has a name: punitive liberalism... more» Disco, inflation, Starsky and Hutch, polyester, consumer debt: little wonder the 1970s were the cradle of postmodernism... more» Waiting for rescuers with his legs crushed under a horse, Cole Porter spent six agonizing hours composing the lyrics to At Long Last Love... more» With all their awkwardness, plastic cups, and forced smiles, do college reunions exist only to solicit money for alma mater?... more» In finding its way forward, Islam needs a Renaissance – and a Leonardo. It does not need a Reformation, or a Luther. Stephen Schwartz explains... more» Europe pioneered the Internet as a mass medium, but the U.S. has made the best use of it: Yahoo, Amazon, Google, eBay, and Arts & Letters Daily... more» ... in German. Like beer advertisers that use bikini-clad women, Michael Moore relies on the power of association rather than proof, argues Todd Gitlin... more» In the U.K. and Oz, “liberalism” means small government, free trade, and self-reliance. For Americans, it means Bill Clinton... more» Without Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake, the “gentle yet fiery-hearted mystic” might’ve been forgotten as another rambling madman... more» Faced with unintelligible poetry, the typical reader goes through stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. By the way, the poetry is still garbage... more» Fascists hate homosexuality, but many fascists are gay. “Scratch the homophobic surface and there’s a spandex swastika underneath,” says Johann Hari... more» The old guard sees cultural criticism as debilitated, even moribund, launched from behind the walls of academe. Just nostalgia for a non-existent golden age?... more» Elegance and precision are necessary allies; together they indicate the presence of truth. For Luc Sante, that truth may be in English or in French... more» Imperial amnesia: the U.S. invaded a distant country to install democracy. Then there was a bloody insurrection. Sound familiar? John Judis thinks so... more» American musical comedy died along with a faith in the common culture that lay behind it: a belief in the power of invention, democracy, and music itself... more» If the arts so richly embody human experience, why do we need critics? Why not just give people Mozart, Keats, and Picasso? Helen Vendler has an answer... more» Those who complain about jobs being exported are silent, Thomas Sowell says, about the millions of jobs that the global economy imports into the U.S.... more» Emerson’s hard-boiled realism and his “Oversoul” idealism pose a conflict, says Harold Fromm, that is reconciled only by his belief in science and in evolution... more» Solidarity’s Adam Michnik knows what totalitarianism is. He wants democracy in Iraq, no matter his opinions of the people who bring it about... more» “To describe Fahrenheit 9/11 as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability.” Hitchens on Moore... more» ... so what? Without American hegemony the world would likely return to a new Dark Age of religious fanaticism, economic stagnation and waning civilization... more» Is the Aboriginal genocide a real event Australian history? Were 10,000 murdered in Queensland? As one scholar shrugged, “Historians are always making up figures”... more» Wilhelm Furtwängler, Lorin Maazel, Paul Kletzki: inside the conductor there may lie a composer screaming, against the odds, to get out... more» Bill Clinton’s presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities; high hopes, ruined by self-indulgence and scattered concentration. Just like his new book... more» His love affairs, addictions, good looks, and early death gave him fame as a tortured sensualist. But was Modigliani really a great artist?... more» Carson McCullers was a sickly woman, paralyzed, alcoholic, and depressed. That she had no children can be taken as proof of heavenly mercy... more» Westerners want to enjoy freedom and the bounty of capitalism. But to say so, to defend it – well, that’s asking too much of sophisticated people. Bin Laden knows this... more» Buwei Yang Chao was a Chinese doctor who “never stirred an egg” until she went to Tokyo, where food was so “uneatable” she began to cook for herself... more» For 80 years Mongolians have been on a first name basis with each other – the Communists banned having two names. Bringing back surnames is tricky... more» He just couldn’t understand all the “squeamishness about the use of gas” in Iraq. “I am strongly in favour of using it against uncivilised tribes.” Saddam? No, Churchill... more» But did he mean chlorine or tear gas? “I do not believe in time,” Vladimir Nabokov wrote. “I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, so as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip”... more» The civilizational importance of the Madrid bombing was lost on Spain. Looking around Europe, terrorists were smart to choose the weakest wildebeest of the herd... more» It’s no fun for a biographer to be called 10th-rate. More precisely, a servile, obsequious, dull, inaccurate, lickspittle, phlegm-eating apology for a biographer... more» High-flying female exec smashes the glass ceiling, heads the firm – and then throws it all away to raise her kids. How guilty should she feel?... more» “We talk as if democracy were the natural human condition,” says Bernard Lewis, “as if any deviation from it is a crime to be punished or a disease to be cured”... more» National Public Radio, with the help of Guys in Suits with Charts, is doing all it can to get rid of the most boring, useless waste of time in its daily schedule: classical music... more» |
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