| Make us your homepage | Friday, November 21, 2008 | VERITAS ODIT MORAS |
Breaking News
Newspapers
Nota Bene
Magazines
Book Reviews
Columnists
Favorites
Weblogs
Radio News
Radio Music
Diversions
Classics Refdesk Arts Journal SciTech Daily Dictionary/Thesaurus CEO Express Yahoo  |
 |
Articles of NoteIn meritocracy – or so it seemed fifty years ago – we would look up to the best of us. It turns out now, however, that we look up to celebrities. A big difference... more» John Milton, boring? Paradise Lost has a little bit of something for everybody. Hot sex! Hellfire! Some damned good poetry, too... more» Who’d want to make a movie that looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting? Thomas Kinkade, obviously. But who could possibly sit through it?... more» “I’ve seen too many peoples dismissed as not ready for self-government,” says Condoleezza Rice. Latin Americans, Asians, Africans – even black Americans... more» At a time when Chinese financial power is so strong, the U.S. government is – alas! – in no mood to hear about the murder of Falun Gong members... more» Distorting art market perceptions. The auction houses use one price for their presale estimates then inflate the actual sale results with their own premium... more» Greenland has rich deposits of oil, zinc, and diamonds. But will independence from Denmark do anything about its suicide rate?... more» The N-word is flourishing among young hip-hop Latinos. Should we care? Raquel Cepeda asks the question... more» An early rival to win the prize for a way to find longitude at sea was a chap from Yorkshire named Jeremy Thacker. Now it seems both he and his ideas were a hoax... more» Eat local? Cold storage for that local fruit may produce more carbon dioxide than shipping New Zealand apples to your market... more» Malcolm Gladwell, one critic fears, “has come to his own tipping point, or – to be fuddy-duddy – fork in the road. This way, guru. That way, serious writer”... more» Pairing writer with subject is an art, says NYRB editor Robert Silvers. Like the late Barbara Epstein, he feels an “intense admiration for wonderful writers”... more» A spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a wolf cub changed Mark Rowlands’s life. From that moment, human company never quite matched up... more» Avoiding clichés isn’t rocket science. At the end of the day, it’s a matter of just being your own fairly unique self. And not saying things you shouldn’t of... more» John Leonard, critic with a vast range and a wondrous way with metaphors, is dead at the age of 69... AP ... Chronicle Review ... NY Observer ... Wash Post ... Kansas City Star ... NYT ... Slate ... Boston Globe Michael Crichton, who delighted lovers of his fiction and enraged environmentalists, is dead at the age of 66... NYT ... AP ... Reason ... Wash Post ... James Fallows ... LAT ... NY Observer ... London Times ... NYT ... Bloomberg ... USAToday ... Wired ... Info Week ... Weekly Standard ... Crichton on Green religion “Poverty and disadvantage are a better preparation for success than wealth and capitalizing on advantage.” Malcolm Gladwell wonders... more» No matter the money or effort you lavish on your body, regardless of pampering or cholesterol monitoring, it has no future. Your genes know this... more» The human moral sense is neither the one nor the other: it is, Jonathan Haidt can show, both biologically evolved and culturally sensitive... more» “I want to make damn sure there’s a tape recorder running for my last words.” No fake deathbed conversions for Richard Dawkins... more» Studs Terkel, “guerilla journalist” who turned the voices of ordinary Americans into a font of history, is dead at the age of 96... Chic Tribune ... Sun-Times ... LAT ... NYT ... Edward Rothstein A cache of the earliest ever classical music recordings, made in Russia by music lover Julius Block in the 1890s, have now come to light... more» Love and hate: the same brain circuitry is used in both extreme emotions – except that hate retains at least a semblance of rationality... more» Martin Luther sparked the Reformation in Wittenberg 500 years ago. While the city still uses Luther to attract tourists, only 10% of its people are Protestant... more» Do tales of witchcraft and wizardry, Harry Potter novels, for instance, have a negative effect on children? Richard Dawkins wants to know... more» At last, for a mere $100,000, you can clone your dog or cat, and own it – or a genetic Xerox of it – for the rest of your life... more» Ever since he could speak, Brandon, now 8, has insisted that he was meant to be a girl. So his parents decided to go with his wishes. An easy case? Not exactly... more» Pollsters take a lot of abuse, but polls are valid guides to the citizenry: not just in politics, but in life circumstances, priorities, hopes and fears... more» From Amazon.com directly to into your hippocampus. You won’t have to read War and Peace, you’ll just download it into your brain. Something like that... more» Catholic culture wars. As T.S. Eliot well knew, tradition can’t be blindly inherited, but has to be recovered for every age, at the cost of great labor... more» Over 900 died in the most infamous mass suicide in American history. Letters now throw light on one Los Angeles family’s Jonestown story... more» Odd entries hang their wikiexistence on “scholarly” notes to Dr. Who and Star Trek – TV shows Wikipedia folk dignify as the “canon”... more» Darwin might not have loved botox, but he would have understood why women in particular are keen to smoothe those wrinkles... more» Many scholars think media manipulate the masses, turning ordinary people into emotional mobs. They never see themselves in the mob... more» Well, Excuuuuuse Meee! Most murders begin with a trivial insult. Then there are political campaigns. Emily Yoffe explains... more» Trust and responsibility. With their mass readership drifting away, newspapers must focus on the “leadership audience”... more» Life without my noisy boy. “You can’t tell just by looking at us. There isn’t even a name for parents who have lost children”... more» Glenn Loury’s mother first explained to him how someone could be “black,” though they looked “white.” Race identity involved personal choice... more» Beneath the picturesque German landscape lie thousands of unexploded bombs, each more and more unstable with every passing day... more» The Dickinson sisters’ neighbor was quite shocked: “I went in there one day, and in the drawing room I found Emily reclining in the arms of a man”... more» Gordon Gekko no more lived on Wall Street than you live on Main Street. To work through the current mess, we need precise names and precise addresses too... more» Prodigies like Picasso may start with a clear idea of what they want and then execute it. Late bloomers like Cézanne grow into their art as into life... more» David Levine, whose brilliant caricatures have charmed readers of the New York Review of Books for 44 years, is going blind... more» Is the electorate stupid? No, just human, and thus predictably irrational. Of course, that in itself may be bad enough... more» Biodiversity. Life is more varied in the warm climes near the equator. Making sense of that has confounded biologists for 200 years... more» Does religion make people nicer? Only if they think Big Brother in the Sky is watching. Ronald Bailey explains... more» French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has won the Nobel Prize for Literature... more» ... more» ... more» If the Nobel Committee lived in an alternative universe... more» “This is the most important election in American history.” Yeah, they say that for every election that comes along... more» Bernard-Henri Lévy and his friend Michel Houellebecq have had enough: “France has vomited on us for too long”... more» In 1947, a Bedouin herder tossed a stone in a cave on the Dead Sea, and heard the shattering of pottery. This led him to some dark parchment fragments... more» The 9/11 Truthers have found some new friends, as the Russian government warms to their psychotic conspiracy fantasies... more» “Classical music audiences are going gray and will soon die.” Yeah, sure. And when was it not so?... more» ... more» What has long been known to all who pay attention is now official: the Nobel lit prize committee doesn’t have a clue... more» ... more» ... more» The idea of a pristine Amazon jungle, untouched by humans, is a myth, a creation of the Western imagination... more» Why does loneliness feel cold and sin feel dirty? Our inner emotional states touch deep metaphors that stretch across cultures... more» Yes, men are hopeless on dates, and tend to say the most idiotic things. On the other hand, women can be stupid too. Why not try a little humor?... more» We’ve been around for two million years, says Stephen Hawking. To last another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before... more» Nietzsche knew best. Morality comes not from society, not from pure reason. It is innate. To know it, we need experimental philosophy... more» Iliad and Odyssey: Homer’s tales of pride and rage, massacre and homecoming, have insinutated themselves in our minds and culture... more» It’s the office China’s writers and artists dread and hate most: the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department. Ha Jin explains... more» When you were a kid, were automobile headlights eyes for you? Was that chrome grill a set of teeth? You were not alone... more» Where do old clothes end up? They may not be worth much at the Salvation Army, but they are big business in Haiti... more» A scorched-earth policy toward museums and monuments of historic and artistic value is the Russian way in the attack on Georgia... more» Rupert Murdoch is utterly without charm. He does not do introspection. He’s right there before you: what you see is what you get... more» Do you hate those wretched, sweet floral perfumes? Try a dab of “Wet pavement” or “In the library” behind the ear... more» Philosophy is not for everyone, says Kelly Jolley. “It’s aristocratic in the sense that any selection based on talent is aristocratic”... more» Group cohesion may be one reason for the global reach of story telling. Another is that fiction is a proving ground for vital social skills... more» Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, with its statistics, anecdotes, and horror stories, still makes a compelling case... more» If there’s anyone unaffected by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it’s the Lehman family. They’ve moved on... more» ... more» Piano recitals in the 19th century often resembled The Ed Sullivan Show more than the serious, hushed concerts of today... more» Democracy on the wane? In country after country, democratic reforms are in retreat. Blame the middle class... more» The book business as we know it will not live happily ever after. Even this era of decline may one day look like the last great golden age... more» Creationism should be taught in science classes as a legitimate point of view, says the Royal Society of Great Britain... more» ... update ... Reiss resigns The more women and men have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their Mars and Venus personalities seem to diverge... more» First move for a con man: tell your victim a story that reveals your similar anxieties, and forge a “mutual understanding”... more» David Foster Wallace, writer of dark, manic irony, has committed suicide... NYT ... NYT appraisal ... WP ... LAT From Casanova’s first orgasm to Bob Hope’s last jokes, history is a series of landmarks, both inspiring and absurd... more» A Tiger’s Tale. In Texas, where you can own a pet tiger, the booming exotic animal trade has grim consequences... more» There’s a 1/1000 chance that you, your family, and the whole human race will die. So where’s the precautionary principle when you really need it?... more» Ben Franklin liked to present himself as a small-town boy bewildered in the big city. This urbane, highly intelligent man was anything but... more» South Bend, Indiana is an unlikely place for a thriving Russian community with a high percentage of piano virtuosos, but history has strange twists... more» Jimmy Slyde was not just a tap dancer: his slides were an expressive idiom for him to tease the beat, to delay and then catch up... more» ... video Beyond boozy comradeship felt toward strangers in bars, and a few moments of euphoria, what’s to be said for being a sports fan?... more» They don’t read Paul Theroux in English departments. “I’m too rude about people,” he says. We do live in a sensitive age... more» Behavioral economics is not just a gizmo added to traditional economics; it is a big departure that will deliver a new way of seeing the world... more» After a full day at the office, Franz Kafka had dinner and got to writing about 11:00 PM. And what if he’d had more time?... more» Why are kids so unimaginative? Yes, that was the question Teresa Belton asked. For an answer look at TV and daydreaming... more» Otto Preminger, hearing a group of fellow émigrés speaking Hungarian, said, “Don’t you people know you’re in Hollywood? Speak German.” He had a point... more» Ossetian hero: Victor Kaloyev murdered the air controller he felt had killed his wife and children. Now out of prison, he finds new fields for revenge... more» International terrorism, for now, is but a puny apocalypse. But at any moment, with the right weapon, it could go from nothing to everything... more» In the 1949 Revolution, a few Americans went to China to help build the Maoist dream. Sixty years later, one of them is still there... more» Is there a performance drug that could actually increase the fairness of sports contests? Yes, there is. Carl Elliott on beta blockers... more» The Cuban judge sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book. The sentence for opposing the Revolution: thirty years... more» The mini-cow is the solution to rising food prices. No taller than a German shepherd, it gives 16 pints of milk a day. Plus, it mows the lawn... more» Hans Monderman loved cars. But he wondered if mature automobile societies could, in essence, act like adults. He was the Traffic Guru... more» Save the Males: feminism today has neutered men and deprived them of their noble, protective role in society, says Kathleen Parker... more» “She’s imaginative, clever, educated,” says Karl Lagerfeld, who has used Carla Bruni as a model. “She knows how to behave”... more» Human brains evolved to be belief engines: we want to explain everything, including our deepest mystical experiences... more» Con men call it, “taking off the touch” – the point in the con when they take the mark’s money. But he had such an honest face... more» In the long history of the cinema, how many movies, let alone violent boxing movies, can have been based on a poem? Yet one was, a 1949 RKO release... more» The Chinese discovered America, says Gavin Menzies. Now he claims that they also sparked the Renaissance... more» How unpredictable is the Kremlin? For Walter Laqueur, leaders of Russia have tended to be more predictable than the White House... more» Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia looks to Russia like the cats’ paw of the West... more» ... Putin makes his move ... brew for a blowup ... Black Sea watershed ... Shaakashvili speaks ... stand up to Russia ... power politics ... Vladimir Bonaparte ... blame the victim ... Russia heading for a fall ... grudge match ... back to the 19th century ... Yukos, now Georgia ... the Great Game ... hard landing for Russia ... Putinism wins ... perils to come ... resurgent bear ... Russian resentment ... Georgia’s problem ... wanna-be superpower ... Putin warmonger ... ominous doctrine ... not Hitler or Stalin ... historic turning point ... Russia does not want war ... back to ’68 There was huge drop in semicolon use from the 18th through the 19th centuries, from 68.1 per 1000 words to 17.7. And that’s just the start of the trouble... more» Dr. Malthus, thou shouldst be living at this hour, with the birth rate in Britain at all-time lows. It’s the real population problem... more» Major world powers are unlikely to take any significant steps against Robert Mugabe because Zimbabwe exports neither oil nor international terrorism... more» A Truman for our times. President Bush has successfully rolled back jihadism, and placed the U.S. to benefit from Asian growth... more» No one yet knows how to disarm bacteria enough to allow the human body to naturally and consistently defend against them. And we still have superbugs... more» Size matters, when it comes to IQ. The bigger your brain, the better. But most important is that certain areas of the brain be larger... more» Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose books told the horrors of the Soviet gulag system, is dead at 89 ... UPI ... Globe & Mail ... Chicago Tribune ... Philly Inquirer ... FrontPage ... Rutland Herald ... last interview ... LAT ... American Spectator ... Wash Times ... Irish Times ... neighbors speak ... Telegraph ... AP ... AFP ... London Times ... Irish Times ... BBC ... Guardian ... NYT ... Der Spiegel ... 1978 Harvard speech ... Putin & Gorbachev ... old Buckley column ... Daily Mail ... Guardian ... Moscow Times ... Open Democracy ... Time ... Nat’l Post ... Slate ... Ottawa Citizen ... Boston Globe ... Nat’l Post ... Forbes ... BBC ... Heritage.org ... Christian Post ... German papers ... New Statesman ... Economist ... Wall Street Journal ... Khrushcev’s daughter ... ever the optimist Coddled from infancy and raised to be academic stars, China’s only children buckle under pressure of their parents’ deferred dreams... more» Blue sky thinking, pushing the envelope: office-speak is just so brainless. Going forward, Lucy Kellaway dialogues... more» Who framed George Lakoff? This noted linguist’s foray into Democratic politics has been, well, a little bit exciting... more» Kay Ryan, America’s new poet laureate, is a miniaturist. Her poems, like pearls, take shape “around an aggravation”... more» Literary critics often use “voice” to mean “style.” But real writers have real voices too, and they have been recorded... more» Frédéric Bourdin had invented scores of identities, in five languages, and he played them to the hilt. But his favorite was the abused child... more» Like every force of nature, lightning gives and takes away. It exudes nitrogen for plants. It is also deadly: it chars, explodes, sears... more» Visiting Harvard to teach is like visiting Disney World. The magic dust induces a light narcosis. The mind goes incontinent... more» ... more» ... more» So globalization, by making nations richer, will make them democratic? Not if we enrich entrenched, anti-democratic powers... more» Quiet! Sleeping Brain at Work. The brain can get a lot done, and leave you a little smarter, when it sleeps... more» The lower types, Nietzsche dared to think, wallow in pity as swine do in mud, their pity for others just pity for themselves. But what of real compassion?... more» What is art criticism today? It’s sure not Harold Rosenberg or Clement Greenberg. Some might call this progress. James Panero calls it a shame... more» Obama needs time to think, McCain needs time to think, and so do you. But how can you find the time, or make the time?... more» Brideshead Revisited is a misfit of a book, loved in the wrong way, as the vomitous stupidity of Miramax’s new film version shows... more» Last year, 194 people killed themselves on the tracks of mass transit systems in the U.K. It’s a theatrical way to die... more» At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Herbert Hoover had his aides pick up every stray bit of paper left on tables or thrown out. Smart move... more» Even Arts & Letters Daily readers have been known to bluff about classic books they’ve not really read. What’s your shameful secret?... more» Writing in Paris just six months before his death, Walter Benjamin produced for Max Horkheimer in New York a report on the literary situation in France... more» The Chevrolet Volt is a new kind of electric hybrid GM wants in showrooms in late 2010. It is a gigantic risk for the company... more» How many of us are aware that when we look into a mirror we see an image on the mirror surface that is exactly half life size?... more» When the U.S. pioneered universal access to high school, the whole economy benefited. Today it needs the same for college... more» Who would guess that Lord Keynes was “deeply moved” by Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, and called it “a grand book”?... more» Just what his ideological enemies might wish for: Christopher Hitchens has been tortured in a waterboarding session... more» The New Yorker was “one of the greatest money pits in magazine history.” Then it got a new editor, David Remnick... more» What about southern Iraq’s important archeological sites – the ones that had been looted? Well, the looting was an urban myth... more» Persia’s Cyrus II was a great defender of human rights. Just like the late Shah, who gave proof of the wisdom of both men to the United Nations... more» Obsessive stalker, an impotent husband, lover of young boys: to some, the creator of Peter Pan was an evil genius. But to others... more» John McWhorter’s artistic pantheon has room for Brahms, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, and Billy Strayhorn. As for Rap... more» Monkeys may not care about money, but they are mad about marshmallows. And to them, marshmallows can begin to look a lot like money... more» Beijing: flat, sprawling, smoggy, jammed with traffic, and nearly all new. A kind of People’s Republic of Houston... more» “All poets’ wives have rotten lives.” The words of Delmore Schwartz were not directly about Elizabeth Hardwick, and she might not have agreed. Still... more» Is fan fiction legal? Fans are nervous. A copyright owner’s rights extend explicitly to derivative works based on the original... more» Homosexual behavior is common in nature, and it plays an important role in survival. Consider Roy and Silo, Central Park’s gay penguins... more» Move over, Noam. A new survey of the world’s top intellectuals shows they are mostly Muslims you never heard of... more» ... more» Shoppers at farmers markets have ten times as many conversations with other people as those at supermarkets. And as for the food... more» The routes of humans from Africa to the Americas over millennia can be mapped as if they were moving over superhighways... more» Paleolithic cave art shows no sun, moon, or plant life, and hardly a human being. It is rather about magnificent animals... more» The downside of natural disasters is so sad and so obvious. Yet, like losing wars, disasters can have an upside... more» “Mother Russia,” or “Mother India.” Men may leave, fight, be compromised, but women represent purity, continuity, home – and babies... more» Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%, far more than previous estimates, says a secret World Bank report... more» As everyone knows, Socrates spoke for all skeptics when he said, “All I know is that I know nothing.” But is that what he really said?... more» “Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t, they’d be married too.” What did Mencken mean?... more» The Architect of Brasília? Yes, it was urban planning gone badly wrong, but the city still contains some graceful modernist government buildings... more» Woodrow Wilson talked of “a common order, a common justice and a common peace” for America and the world. His is an idea ripe for revival... more» |
|
New BooksConnoisseurs take serious interest in the high arts of painting, music, and literature. Why is great perfume not seen as in the same class?... more» Overparenting. Conservatives fear we’re turning our kids into pampered ninnies (i.e., Democrats); liberals think we’re raising selfish robots (Republicans)... more» Did Proust anticipate the course of 20th-century American literature? Edmund Wilson thought so, and that Thornton Wilder’s novels were proof... more» Franz Kafka was sufferer and victim, the tormented subject of nightmares. But also a master of nightmares, even a connoisseur of them... more» “And move next to some gay people.” Richard Florida argues it is not weather that maketh a city, but arts and culture and good restaurants... more»
That Britannica set was to sit in your home merely as a reference tool. Those forbidding Great Books, however, were actually meant to read... more» ... more» China may be ugly and soulless, but Paul Theroux retains a sickened fascination for India, a land that is trapped between hypermodernity and medievalism... more» The weird world of art. How do so many different views and kinds of art jell into a rough consensus about what art is in the first place?... more» Are atheists nastier than religious folk? Some believers seem to think so. But maybe they are the very ones who make atheists nasty... more» Ludwig Wittgenstein was an arresting mix of monk, mystic, and mechanic. His family home in childhood is best described as a madhouse... more» Mortimer Adler and the Great Books. Yes, it was all rather earnest. But with humane studies having fallen to theory and politics, nostalgia is justified... more» V.S. Naipaul has always been a sadist and a smell-smock and a coxcomb, and he’s always enjoyed it. But why does he so want us to know it?... more» Geoff Nicholson likes walking the streets and lanes of London. Sure, but how can he also enjoy to walk the car-glutted streets of Los Angeles?... more» Samuel de Champlain never learned to swim, yet shot American rapids in bark canoes and starting in 1599 crossed the Atlantic 27 times without losing a ship... more» “A monster that must be put back in its place”? Heavens, no. Finance is a mirror that shows mankind its true face, warts and all... more» If there was ever a man who fit Comte de Buffon’s idea of genius as the capacity for taking pains, it’s Charles M. Schulz... more» “Oh dear, oh dear, how I sometimes wish I were respectable and dead,” he wrote. Now Benjamin Britten is both... more» Samuel Adams burned letters the British might use against him. He wasn’t playing for the history books, he was trying to plot a revolution... more» Loneliness: more and more people in the U.S. and across the globe now live alone and say they have no close confidant... more» ... more» Silent muses: three women who suffered immensely because they were tied to three men of artistic genius – Cézanne, Monet, and Rodin... more» Travel writing has often been a form of escape. Not so with V.S. Naipaul, who wants only to transform experience into art... more» Hollywood’s judgments on its movies have been as self-regarding and boneheaded as those of academics have been faddish. Then there is David Thomson... more» “Virginia Woolf’s public sympathy with the lives of poor women was always at odds with private recoil.” Consider her servants... more» ... more» Rimbaud, Hefner, Lennon, Eminem: how fascinating to watch these men, as they age, grow from being rebels to being rather lovable chaps... more» The Florence Nightingale of myth was gentle and gracious. In truth, she was acerbic and uncompromising in her fight for cleaner, better hospitals... more» Mia Farrow’s plan to get Blackwater into Darfur may look like an odd fantasy of a rich eccentric, but war-hungry celebrities are a serious threat... more» The massacre of Gen. Elphinstone’s army of 16,000 soldiers and camp followers in Afghanistan in 1842 prompted revenge attacks. They did not help... more» Charles Schulz’s one regret: he never once let Charlie Brown kick the football held out for him by Lucy. What was it about that unkicked football?... more» It is not just an idea, it can now and again be a real feeling: that English is not really your language; rather, you are merely its speaker... more» Han van Meegeren fecit. The spectre of forgery chills the receptiveness, the will to believe, without which the experience of art cannot occur... more» Paul Theroux has spent many a night trying to sleep in yet another smelly rail car shared with strangers. For his readers’ pleasure, of course... more» Katherine Mansfield’s moods went from feverish glee to raging discontent. She was vicious when cornered; her friends slipped in and out of favor... more» Thrasymachus thought it better to try to be happily unjust, than stupidly just. Does Raymond Geuss follow in his line?... more» Gore Vidal’s mocking, disenchanted patriotism will always be a resource for all who wish the American republic well... more» In 1885, Czar Alexander III gave the Czarina an astonishing Easter present: an exquisite egg of gold, diamonds, and rubies made by Carl Fabergé... more» When Keats wrote of “some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken” he meant Herschel. Science dazzled the Romantics... more» Emily Post’s own life story testifies to the redemptive power of repression. She became Emily Post by doing what Emily Post advised... more» Heston Blumenthal’s fiendish recipes will not be tried by many. Green tea and vodka in liquid nitrogen, snail porridge, smoky bacon ice cream... more» Knabenphysik: Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac: none achieved anything as important after age thirty as they had before... more» Math wasn’t Einstein’s strong point, but how bad was he? Very, very bad, says a ruthless new book... more» Sam Johnson defined a lexicographer as “a harmless drudge.” He never foresaw the armed and dangerously funny Roy Blount Jr.... more» Much of the perfume-buying public sprays itself with high-priced smells that are the fragrance equivalent of airport novels... more» In the well-scrubbed West, it’s easy to assume that personal cleanliness is an objective matter. So try a visit to India... more» For the uninformed youngster who thinks easy sex was ever the way, Philip Roth’s strange new novel may be the perfect back-to-school gift... more» ... more» For Dostoevsky, murderers, suicides, child molesters, and blasphemers actually quicken the deepest Christian faith... more» Madame de Staël brought to the world a mixture of self-regard, self-delusion, and raw, overpowering intellect. And other charms as well... more» Patrons can make life easier for artists. But while the money may be good, it tends to come with strings, or even handcuffs, attached... more» Star, raconteur, mensch. Cheeta has at last told all, and you’ll never again think of Hollywood memoirs in the same way... more» Yes, he’s a celeb who wears pricey suits. But Bernard-Henri Lévy is a real-deal philosopher, too, one who gives us much to ponder... more» One of the saddest stories of the 20th century is the fate of air travel. In 1900 it was a dream. By 1999 it was a tedious chore... more» Can we ever know what was in the hearts of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, the man who owned her?... more» China was once thought to have no great tradition of science and invention. The reversal in thinking on this question is owed to Joseph Needham... more» “Libertarian paternalism” is a phrase with more than a whiff of paradox about it. Is it a third way for politics and economics?... more» Richard Rorty said no standpoint outside human descriptions exists from which to decide truth or falsity. He was a corrupter of the youth... more» A man must be adaptable to win in life, he said. Yet Niccolò Machiavelli, the ultimate expert in winning, lost it all... more» Simon Schama’s hero in his latest book is America, vindicated by history as a land of everlasting optimism... more» Han Van Meegeren: a second-rate painter who turned to forgeries for easy money in the 1920s. And what money he made... more» We live in an age of autobiography. Yet what twenty-something has earned the right to publish her spiritual journey?... more» In the summer of 1857, an emigrant wagon train from Arkansas was massacred as it crossed Utah. The killers were not Paiutes, but Mormons... more» Pompeii: a city where dogs howl, late-night drunks carouse, there are not enough lavatories, and everyone has bad breath... more» Oscar Wilde was a man made of books, from Plato to Pater. The story of his libraries is the story of his life... more» Proust can keep his madeleines. For some people, nothing brings back childhood like the inky smell of Batman comics... more» White Castle created the template in 1916 for all fast-food restaurants in the world. And thus was the hamburger born... more» Sushi is just what “White People” want: foreign, expensive, healthy, and hated by the uneducated. White People are not snobs or anything... more» It’s not enough to be antifascist; one must also be in principle antitotalitarian. That about sums up Bernard-Henri Lévy... more» In Heinrich Himmler’s view, Slavs were “Mongol types” to be replaced with blond Aryans in the east. Russians were mere “redskins”... more» Every unhappy book launch is unhappy in its own way, except when it involves Islam. Then the plot is rather familiar... more» Fables for children work not by pointing to a moral but by complicating moral thinking. Consider Babar the Elephant... more» In 1940, Churchill sent a group of young, handsome British officers to Washington to charm the power elite and... more» Feeling a sense of loss for a God you don’t believe in anyway? Isn’t the idea rather soppy, Mr. Barnes?... more» The entry of Britain and France into the Greek War of Independence is the first humanitarian intervention. It wasn’t the last... more» A black hole is a kind of one-way gate in the universe: Stuff can fall in, but nothing comes out. Easy, eh? Not exactly... more» Whatever divides religion and atheism, much more important is the potential of both to promote a sense of compassion ... more» Wittgenstein family: among the richest, most talented and eccentric in Europe, a family of geniuses and suicides... more» In 1904, Max Factor huddled in a forest with his wife and children, hunted by the Czar’s men. Hollywood was still a long way off... more» Intelligent Design tries with evidence and logic to show that life was designed by an intelligent agency competent to the task... more» Why are some countries rich, others poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in England? Why is Africa still mired in poverty?... more» “Interface” for “meet”? Maybe soon the word it will become a synonym for “kiss,” as in: “Interface me, baby!”... more» What are lies, and what do they mean in political life today? Jacques Lacan has no answers, just dinner party anecdotes... more» A great contribution of the 20th century was to let the chaos and cadences of the world, the sounds |
