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School needs not just to teach math, science, and reading, but also must, in Huck Finn’s term, “sivilize” young people... more»
Start your fiction, says Harry Mulisch, from a fantastic but not improbable fact. Art has to go from there down to a thick social reality... more»
Cultural theory can’t afford to keep on with the same old narratives of class, race, and gender, says Terry Eagleton. Okay, so then what?... more»
A militarist monster, forged in late Meiji from Japanese nativism and German racial theories, was alive well before Pearl Harbor... more»
Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis turns on one of the most momentous cultural events of human history: the artistic and literary representation of everyday life... more»
If novelty helps sell art, scandal is even better. Was Huck Finn gay? Did sister Fanny actually write Mendelssohn’s works? Charles Rosen laments... more»
Critical realism rescues us from the postmodernist nightmare and gives us back reality. We need a concept of truth – and science is not just another myth... more»
The price of action against North Korea will likely be high, the price of inaction much higher. We can’t every decade keep relearning the lesson of Pearl Harbor... more»
“Orwellian” means manipulation of language to deceive the public. The word should also suggest bravery and idealism, George Orwell’s stubborn honesty... more»
Cookbooks are a bit like sex books in requiring a perfection on the part of the reader. Julian Barnes knows what a fallible cook he is. It makes him a better guide... more»
Animals, including us, get pleasure from things that promoted fitness for ancestors. Food and sex, to be sure. But what of aesthetic pleasure? From Plato to Pinker... more»
Helas! France needs the EU to be an instrument of its national grandeur. France is starting to realize that this isn’t going to work – and it has no Plan B... more»
“Merciless toward the failings of democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes committed in the name of proper doctrines.” Ah yes, intellectuals... more» ... more»
Leo Strauss was a great believer in the usefulness of lies in politics. Like Plato and Nietzsche, he thought the unwashed masses were not fit for truth... more»
The culture of therapy, with its low-grade vision of human achievement, is a great vice of our age. Life doesn’t make us ill. Friends are better than therapists... more»
The “Nascar Dad” represents a huge voter block that, much to the chagrin of the Left, is solidly behind George Bush. Can Democrats win back these men?... more»
Science more accurate than myth? Astrology superior to astronomy? Why does Western medicine always go around negativizing disease, suffering, and death?... more»
Agatha Christie’s novels conform to Burkean conservatism: justice rarely comes from the state, but from civil society – a private detective, a clever old spinster... more»
That damn bird! Parrots, as we all know, can “parrot” human speech, but cannot grasp syntax and meaning. Well, anyway, that’s what we thought we knew... more»
It is easy to make fun of New Age obsessions with nonwestern cultures, but the civilizations of Asia did leave splendid legacies in art and science. How do you measure achievement?... more»
“Life is not what one has lived, but what one remembers and how one chooses to tell it.” Gabriel García Márquez has some rollicking memories... more» ... more»
Thucydides wrote, “large nations do what they wish, small nations accept what they must.” The U.S. position is even more extreme, says Noam Chomsky... more»
What with sound art, photo art, and virtual-reality art, how can an Old Master, armed merely with paints, palette, and a few hog’s-hair brushes, compete?... more»
Local content in peril: the advent of web TV means that now more than ever distance cannot protect a cultural market. Will U.S. program makers be the winners?... more»
The flirtation between church and state in the U.S. is more overt than ever. What’s needed, says John Allen Paulos, is a new faithless-based initiative... more»
Cultural protectionism has never existed for France. If it had, says Jean-Francois Revel, French culture, like the culture of ancient Sparta, would have died long ago... more»
Sergei Prokofiev: a lifelong child, selfish, petulant, needy, wounding; a petit bourgeois crushed by the forces he tried to placate... more»
A new Holden Caulfield, but on amphetamines, with “lawless brown hair, the eyelashes of a camel, an’ big ole puppy-dog features”... more»
Imagine the smallest possible number and call it ghost. Now divide it by 2. And, ah, Ghost it seems was not the smallest number after all... more»
Dylan Thomas, “young and easy under the apple boughs,” lovable cad and poetic genius, doomed by his willfulness... more»
Bad academic writing: mere pretentious gibberish, or a means to express difficult but intricate new ideas? Debate persists... more» ... WSJ
Today we want warmth and familiarity in written speech: we want it to ape the spoken. And the cost? Eloquence and elegance... more»
John Mortimer knows: life is short and anxious, so relax and make the most of moments of happiness. Champagne helps... more»
Hitler was a thoughtful host: guests could eat vegetarian with beer and wine, and each guest room had both Mein Kampf and pornography... more»
“English identity” may in fact exist – but to be English is in truth to find the whole idea of identity rather awkward... more»
Aesthetic plenitude fuels our economy: if it isn’t dresses and cars, it’s paper clips, pagers, shoelaces, bath mats, bandages, ballpoints... more»
Fallingwater: it is not so much its modernity that enthralls us as its antiquity – the ancient rocks, the eternal stream... more» ... more»
“Correggio is the only artist ever to depict the anus and scrotum of an airborne angel.” Who else would see it but Germaine Greer?... more»
James Clerk Maxwell was arguably the first thinker to grasp that physical processes don’t match any common-sense description of them... more»
The Russian dacha: first it was aristocratic, then became bourgeois, then something for true comrades. It remains in the life of Russia... more»
Sammy Davis Jr. always had to buy affection: onstage, he spent his prodigious talent; offstage, he could use his oodles of money... more»
Depressed? But there are so many cures: Rebirthing, Past Life Therapy, Recovered Memory and Alien Abduction Therapy, Touch and Breathe... more»
Skip the parrots and the peg legs: being a pirate is just about swaggering speech. No need to light yer cannon, Jim lad, pirates be all talk... more»
The Rorschach inkblot test tends to label most normal people as somehow sick. It’s handy to keep the clients coming back for the cure... more»
Pity the young female writer who wants to explore women’s experience with texture, depth, complexity. The demand is for sunny, silly books... more»
Discovery: the universe guides us toward truths, because those truths are the things that govern what we see. Consider String Theory... more»
Bruno Hauptmann went to his death when Charles Lindbergh thought he could recognize his voice after years. How good are earwitnesses?... more»
Philosophy is highly general, abstract, impersonal, and even non-factual. Not only is it about all that is, it is about all that might be. Cool!... more»
Globalization anxieties require demons to be invented for conspiracy theories. Let’s see ... Americans? Perhaps. But how about the Jews?... more»
God deposited each new species on the planet, fully formed and marked “made in heaven.” He also allowed a few minor adjustments... more»
The racial gap in U.S. school achievement should make us furious. The situation of black and Hispanic students is an educational catastrophe... more»
Between 1400 and 1950, the art and science achievements of the West are staggering. In the 19th century output began to fall. Charles Murray wonders why... more»
The Rite of Spring is a brutal story that says life is food, sex, and death. But the music is really about dance, as Diaghilev and Nijinsky knew... more»
Today 26% of Americans live alone (it was 8% in 1940). It’s a demographic revolution changing everything: food, sex, pets, money, politics, religion... more»
Transgenic food crops using rDNA are the safest form of plant breeding ever. Yet a perverse logic regards “organic” foods as superior... more»
Kodak: a word made up by the man who invented both dry film and photo-finishing. George Eastman said, “you press the button, we do the rest”... more»
Killing a few thousand people could be justified as an attack on world capitalism, says Ted Honderich. Maybe Osama got it right... more»
Vladimir Putin was called by former KGB colleagues a “complete conformist.” But he was also a man with a striking moral sense... more»
Stress debriefing: another fad of clinical psychology now in doubt. The FDA insists drugs be tested. Why not mental therapies?... more»
Terrorist as narcissist: seen today, the Weathermen are a complacent, self-absorbed remnant, sunk in a farcical radicalism ... more»
So breast implants cannot be linked to systemic diseases like cancer, lupus, or chronic fatigue. Then why are implants so contentious?... more»
Good-looking profs get better teaching evaluations. Ugly, unkempt teachers who refuse botox, diets, or fashion advice are asking for trouble... more»
Hosni Mubarak rules Egypt along with a gerontocracy that that tells him what it thinks he wants to hear. Except General Suleiman... more»
Any woman can flash skin, but the most irresistible is one who flirts and seduces with a sharp, knowledgeable mind revealed in lively conversation... more»
Global warming: the media take is now merely alarmist, giving no idea of how flimsy the evidence is for its being caused by human beings.... more»
In our indifference to the pain of animals, says J.M. Coetzee, we are like the “Germans who went about their ordinary lives in the shadow of Treblinka”... more»
We are all Africans – unless you buy the idea that human beings sprang up over the world at about the same time. This now seems unlikely... more»
France is now the weak man of Europe: mired in hypocrisy, uncaring for its aged, disliked by allies. In short, it’s going down the gurgler... more»
Goya’s Black Paintings: autistic, sly, crazy, leering, howling works, says Robert Hughes. A world of moral chaos, evoked in daubs and slashes of paint... more» ... more»
Let’s suppose you are just a brain in a vat, all your experience illusory. Then you gain a body, but still believe the same things. Donald Davidson has a view on that... more» ... more»
What went wrong in Iraq? It was all going to be so easy, quick, and cheap. Gen. Wesley Clark explains how the best democratic intention can lead us toward disaster... more»
Sergei Prokofiev loved to alternate toccata-like rhythmic figuration with soaringly lyrical melodies, showing two sides of a complex musical personality... more»
Overtaken by the democratic vitality of the U.S., outperformed by Asia, bitterly resented by other members of the E.U. It’s France’s harsh new world... more»
The agony of the essay. Too many modern essays are thin, watery things by self-absorbed sentimentalists who inflict their maladies on the reader... more»
The body is a wildly popular topic in cultural studies: the plastic, socially constructed body, not the piece of matter that sickens and dies. Postmodernism loves body but is terrified by biology... more»
Postwar Germans and Japanese were patriotic, cooperative peoples ready for democracy. Postwar Iraqis live in a system of clans and tribes, like the Hatfields and the McCoys... more»
In Watergate and the Clinton scandal a few journalists did heroic, even historic, work. Others did a fairly decent job. Many more were suggestible and sheep-like... more»
Even though Leo Strauss failed in his attempt to reform the character of liberal education in America, his works continue to edify, to charm, and to influence... more»
Terry Eagleton: anatomizer of our age who does not use email, the Oxford don students call a stand-up comic, the revolutionary who is now a pillar of the establishment... more»
“You’re one of my best students, and you could have a great career,” his professor said. “But departments are loath to hire political conservatives. You’ve got to be really quiet”... more»
Aside from Woodrow Wilson, the best-read U.S. president of the 20th century was Richard M. Nixon, who took bookish delight in exchanging letters with the likes of Hugh Kenner and Leslie Fiedler... more»
American women, capitalism’s latest recruits, are offered membership in the free market economy on the same harsh terms as men. Consider then the raising of children... more»
John Buchan, author of the Thirty-Nine Steps, was that British amalgam of industry, priggishness, passion, duty, honor, energy, and in his Victorian manner, eccentricity... more»
It is both part rarefied summit of metaphysical giants, part traveling circus. Carlin Romano on the babbling, Byzantine World Congress of Philosophy... more»
The Last Intellectual in the mind of many a Frenchman. Jean-Paul Sartre invented a fine vaccine against totalitariarism, but forgot to inoculate himself... more»
Shopping, a ceaseless search for the next meaningless object, is for people without purpose. The British are not even good at shopping, having become a nation of shoplifters... more»
Like the backward baseball cap, gay is a meme that has spread over the world, says Richard Dawkins. He’s hoping the same thing will happen to bright... more»
Joan of Arc had to wait 600 years to become a saint. Mother Teresa gets there in six years. Pope John Paul II is giving out sainthoods like Hollywood gives out Oscars... more»
The hard-core modernism of Joyce and Eliot is sterile, perverse, and impenetrable. It’s jazz modernism that may yet save the world... more»
Okay, so Paul Johnson thinks art must represent, and thus praises Norman Rockwell. But to regard Matisse and Picasso as frauds... more»
If anti-intellectualism is now extended to religion, is that all bad? So what if ten percent of the faithful think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife?... more»
Pat didn’t own a mink coat, he said. “But she does have a respectable cloth coat. And I always tell her she’d look good in anything.” Nixon: man and image... more»
Technology has the capacity to make our lives better in almost every respect. But will it improve our writing? Well may Susan Greenfield ask... more»
W.B. Yeats was a great poet who was also into a batso metaphysics. Need we know the rubbish, Clive James asks, to love the poetry?... more»
With tactics learned in the last century at the knee of Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung, Robert Mugabe holds fast to his reign of terror... more»
Modern pesticides are much more a cure for human misery than a cause: it’s diseases, not chemicals, that kill in poor countries... more»
We were not dropped by God from the sky. However, a cultured adult is far from a neonate. We live between nature and nurture... more»
The 1920s, the age of bathtub gin, flagpole-sitting, mah-jong, and Valentino, makes the most clearly defined American decade... more»
Dueling: the drama of heroic, deadly struggles of men with swords or pistols over matters of honor. Yes, boys will be boys... more»
Did Jan Morris write with less flowery, purple excess when she was a man? Oh, she has always had a weakness for hyperbole... more»
It wasn’t Nietzsche who stood at the door of the Nietzsche Archive to welcome Adolf Hitler. It was his dreadful sister, Elisabeth... more»
The members al-Qaeda may be a gaggle of losers, infantile fanatics, but they are no less fearsome for that. Mohamed Sifaoui knows... more»
He was indicted for contempt of Congress and his marriage to Marilyn was a Ben/J.-Lo event, but for Arthur Miller, the plays are the thing... more»
It’s fitting that the man who made Elvis Presley into a pop icon was creature of self-invention: Andreas van Kuijk, aka Col. Tom Parker... more»
Why the huge economic gap between North and South America? The hidalgo contempt for work and the gringo embrace of it? What else?... more»
Virgil aimed not to equal Homer, but to surpass him. Moderns who dismiss his ambition should take another look... more». Meanwhile, in Purgatory...
Vintage clothes, crackly, old blues records, organic foods. We want them in a world of spin doctors and plastic artifice. We want authenticity... more»
“We the people” also includes witch hunters, Know Nothings, purity crusaders, book censors, moral vigilantes, Klansmen, and meddling wowsers... more»
The Nobel prize is given to economists in alternate years who hold opposite views. Could it happen in physics?... more» ... How fair are the Nobel decisions? ... more»
Eugene Istomin, pianist who grew from child prodigy to become a grand old man of music, is dead at 77... Tim Page ... NYT ... WashPost
She’s broken just about every other taboo on the planet. So if Germaine Greer now turns her eye to pretty young boys, why the horror?... more»
Evelyn Waugh: the bloated, puffed-up face, the beady eyes red with wine and anger, the cigar jabbing as he went in for the attack... more»
Fatal Golden Gate. His note read, “I’m walking to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I won’t jump.” No one smiled... more»
The U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on the Saa restaurant to try to kill Saddam. That’s what people think. Americans are a mystery to Iraqis... more»
How pointless and vapid our debates of “fair trade” and “free trade.” It’s the poor of the world who gain the most from open commerce... more» ... more»
So if there were no WMDs ready to fire, what’s so far been found? Enough to justify the invasion? David Kay’s report to Congress... more»
New research confirms that Arts & Letters Daily readers live longer, suffer less senile dementia than other web surfers... more» ... more»
The pancake platter comes with biscuits. You explain it in the blackness before dawn, and keep at it all day. Your back hurts and you’re too old for this... more»
Make your book launch a big event: invite to the party the very people you attack in the book. Pow! Bang! Whap! Or maybe not... more»
Not all of Prague’s visiting geniuses were as fatally hexed as Mozart and Brahe, Kafka and Rilke. But Prague has seen some bad luck... more»
J.M. Coetzee, novelist and essayist of post-apartheid South Africa, wins the Nobel Prize for Literature... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more»
Under the altar of St. Peter’s, sheep, ox, and pig bones, with the complete skeleton of a mouse, have been found. What of St. Peter himself?... more»
Free Mickey! Swiftian satire say some, obscene nonsense Disney’s lawyers insist. It’s the world of the Air Pirates... more» ... pix.
Edmund Gosse was “felled, flayed, eviscerated, pulverized and blown to the winds” in a review so bad that it can still bring gasps today... more»
John Rawls argued that bad luck must be remedied by public policy. You’d think Bill Bennett and Milton Friedman would disagree. Not quite... more»
Elia Kazan, film maker of genius, the man who directed A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, is dead... NY Times ... LA Times ... Guardian ... Le Monde ... Independent ... Telegraph ... Weekly Standard ... A.O. Scott ... Robert Fulford
George Plimpton, bon vivant, author, founder of the Paris Review, is dead... NY Post ... SF Chronicle ... NY Times ... Telegraph ... Guardian ... Paris Review ... New Yorker ... Slate ... Independent ... East Hampton Star ... Thomas Beller
Edward W. Said, Palestinian-born scholar, writer and critic, is dead... NYT... Guardian ... Le Monde ... BBC ... Alexander Cockburn ... Telegraph ... Brian Whitaker ... Malise Ruthven ... Scott McLemee ... Libération ...
LAT ...
Christopher Hitchens ...
Independent ...
Al-Ahram ...
Lee Smith ... W.J.T. Mitchell ... James Heartfield ... Stephen Howe ... Eric Banks
... David Herman ... Michael Wood
... funeral
As Salman Sharif gave the order to open fire, he was certain he would die. Nobody tries to kill Uday Hussein and expects to get away with it... more»
Crime, or honorable parental instinct? Nepotism is not so bad: it “links the generations in a chain of generosity and gratitude”... more»
They are intensely passionate about the idea of democracy, even as they squabble over tactics for Iraq. Neocons still call the shots... more»
Are grammatical rules devices to make it harder for the lower orders to ascend the social ladder? Consider class, power, and the singular they... more»
At around $7.50 per hour, food service work in the law-school dining hall is the lowest paid on the Harvard campus. No one notices... more»
The great department stores hid our sense of acquisition as sociability: they were cathedrals of materialist aspiration and pleasure. Their decline diminishes hope... more»
Environmentalists will within ten years come to regard genetic modification as one of the most powerful tools for cleaning up the environment, predicts Jonathan Rauch... more»
Journalists, heroes? Stop kidding, says John Burns, who works for the New York Times, has a flak jacket and a wallet full of dollars: “There is corruption in our business”... more»
It’s not the instructor, but rather swearing, violent students who now dominate many British classrooms. Maybe it’s time for teachers to start fighting back... more»
Rabbit-Proof Fence is a compelling story that plays to the sense of guilt felt by Australians. But sometimes a culture of guilt needs a cold bath of factual analysis... more» ... more»
Perhaps the problems of faraway peoples are for them to solve, as intervention by the West would be racist, or colonialist, or venal. Or perhaps not, argues Ian Buruma... more»
Extra-terrestrial beings: what if they turned out to be not only technologically ahead of us, but morally too? Paul Davies on E.T. and religion... more»
Will Arab youth put their money into Hi, a new U.S. magazine, or a pack of Marlboros? The State Department is wondering... more»
New Agers from Hollywood to New York enthuse over Sufi trances and meditation. Do they have a clue what they’re talking about?... more»
If Frida Kahlo leaves us with a sense that she’d be a better medical illustrator than artist, so what? In those creepy paintings, you feel her pain... more»
U.S. workers can trade off higher income for more leisure, if they choose. It’s not so easy for Europeans to do the opposite... more»
The artifacts stolen from the Baghdad Museum belong to the Iraqi people, but also to all mankind. Col. Matt Bogdanos is tracking them down, one by one... more»
Henry Clay was called “a being so brilliant yet so corrupt, which, like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, shines and stinks.” Where stands the art of insult today?... more»
Few are the health problems that can’t be treated by a solid martini, followed by a thick steak and crusty bread, washed down with a fine, old blood-thick Burgundy... more»
“Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent,” George Orwell wrote of Gandhi. But we must also apply the same test to Orwell... more»
If it’s disturbing to look at those September 11th photographs over breakfast, imagine what it was like to take them. Richard Drew knows... more» ... more»
Oklahoma is not the easiest place to be if you’re gay. But its inhospitable climate seems to have fostered true grit among local pioneers in gay history... more»
Every drive through Iraq in a U.S. Humvee is a referendum. Sunni faces remain sullen, but in much of Iraq, smiles tell another story... more» ... New Iraqi poll.
Günter Guillaume, secretary and valet to Chancellor Willy Brandt, was a communist spy. His story, with Brandt’s, is the subject of Michael Frayn’s deeply complex new play... more» ... more»
Anti-Americanism is now a part of the world’s psyche: a backlash against a nation that comes bearing modernism to those who want it, but fear and despise it... more»
When Marseille had strikes by trash collectors, tons of garbage rotted in the streets, so government leapt to action. It sprayed the garbage with perfume: a French solution... more»
Do all the ills of the Arab world “emanate from Orientalism,” having nothing to do with the socio-economic or political makeup of Arab lands? Hardly, says Ibn Warraq... more»
An American artist in Baghdad sitting on a stoop or in a cafe drawing always elicits an avid audience. Onlookers feel free to stab at the paper to make a point... more»
My new friend Hegel. His critics have him wrong, says Michael Prowse. He was not opposed to individualism, but saw how people could link together toward a common good... more»
The Immaculate Conception idea of U.S. foreign policy, or anybody’s foreign policy, is so absurd that no sentient being should believe it. Yet many people do... more»
It’s the new moral law for modern man: moral concern increases as the square of the distance from the person expressing the concern. Consider the case of Bertrand Cantat... more»
Educated idiots: as the Leninist left died in the rubble of the Berlin Wall, so did the literary intelligentsia vanish morally in the ashes of the Twin Towers, says Geoffrey Wheatcroft... more»
The 9/11 attacks were just what George Bush needed to galvanize opinion and justify his global power grab. That’s why he planned them from the start... more» ... more»
Novelist, feminist, lover of Chopin, eccentric, trousered icon, George Sand has been in a rural cemetery for 130 years. Time for a change... more»
About a fifth of Americans opposed the U.S. attack on Iraq. Together they make up an informal “peace party.” Who are they? Can they make a difference?... more»
America in decline. Is the U.S a giant of both ideas and power? Or is it tired and adrift – its military a hollow shell for rotting culture and values?... more»
Joseph Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction” is near to storm force, expanding the scope of human choice. Tyler Cowen sings its praises... more»
Tom Utley has pretended all his life to enjoy Leonardo, Chekhov, Verdi, Keats, and the like. In fact, it’s been nothing but a big fat lie... more»
The big weapons makers that alarmed Eisenhower have shrunk in size since the Cold War. Now private companies take to the battlefield itself... more»
Show-offs and career-killers. And they do their poisonous work for free books, a few bucks, and a byline. Do book critics really enjoy reading?... more»
The Manchurian Candidate may be pulp fiction, but it is very toney pulp – a man in a tartan tuxedo, chicken à la king with shaved truffles... more»
Edward Teller, who built the H-bomb, but felt that the atomic attack on Japanese cities had been a mistake, is dead at age 95... more» ... more»
“Authentic” performances of Bach can be among the worst, the music racing along, turning the St. Matthew Passion into a bubbly disco track... more»
Leni Riefenstahl, film director who claimed to have been guided by a “search for beauty,” but who was reviled as Hitler’s propagandist, is dead... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more»
Multinationals have hijacked “free trade” and corrupted the WTO’s agenda. Even economist Jagdish Bhagwati agrees that poor countries may be cheated... more»
“If science can’t say where the laws of physics come from, why imagine religion will do any better?” That kind of skepticism is not shared by all scientists... more»
Donald Davidson, thinker who changed how philosophers view the relation between actions, reasons, and causes, is dead at age 86... more»
The Galileo Orbiter will soon commit celestial suicide, plunging as a million white-hot fragments into Jupiter. It will be a useful death... more»
The vast diversity of life on earth came about through evolution. What does Darwinism tell us about defending the American homeland?... more»
Both were aspiring novelists, but when she was eclipsed by his success, she went for revenge: “If I could not be happy I would make us both miserable”... more» ... “Envy”
Beijing must either go with the people of Hong Kong, or oppose them. Two systems? Rubbish. The issue is not the future of Hong Kong. It’s the future of China... more»
Aesthetic design is not about what we need to exist, says Virginia Postrel. It is about the deeply human pleasure and comfort of beauty... more»
“I am the illegitimate child of a diabolical couple called fascism and Stalinism.” Bernard-Henri Lévy: media-friendly French philosopher and all-round stud... more»
Hugh Hefner is 77, but likes to date girls in their 20s. Does he ever consider dating a gorgeous woman of 40 with some experience of life? Well... more»
It was once thought that the personal acquaintance of a subject by her biographer was a virtue. In our cynical times it’s seen as a vice. Consider Iris Murdoch... more»
Richard Holm laments the efforts of the Americans to help the Hmong against the Pathet Lao in the 1960s. Intentions were good, but the U.S. is not omnipotent... more»
Neoclassical economics takes for granted we’re rational agents bent on maximum benefit. Human nature complicates things with the endowment effect... more»
Europe may relegate Muslim migrants to ghettoes festering with crime and disease, or Muslims might yet revitalize Europe. Or maybe something quite new... more»
Viagra has been hailed as a quick-fix cure-all. But it may be that our love affair with the drug is destined to fail – damn, it all began so romantically... more»
Anti-Americanism, which might have the dignity of an argument, a grown-up idea, is less of a threat to France than the creeping moldiness of French life... more»
If Disneyland Paris is near to broke, how come its hotels are full, with long lines for rides? All you hear is English, German, and Italian, plus the odd French curse... more»
Sickness, death, and murder mark the Trotsky family diaspora. One bright corner of it can now be found in Bethesda, Maryland. Her name is Nora Volkow... more»
Jumping in Goethe’s lap, crooning into Beethoven’s ear, on long walks with Karl Marx. That was Bettina Brentano. But she just wasn’t Napoleon’s type... more»
When Paul Krassner started The Realist in 1958 it was hippest magazine in the U.S. He was still living with his parents and was still a virgin... more»
PowerPoint is the epitome of techno stupidity: dumbed down ideas displayed with stylish inanity and contempt for the audience. Edward Tufte explains... more»
Is our universe the only one going or are there others out there, “thick as blackberries”? Depends on what counts as evidence, says Jim Holt... more»
Withering skepticism is just what the doctor (physics Ph.D) ordered to keep crazy theorists in check. But theory-making is just so much fun... more»
George Bush outrages the left, and yet shows himself to be a pragmatic conservative with an instinct to conserve the liberal welfare state.... more»
Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am Not a Muslim trashes the feel-good vision of Islam as a “religion of peace.” No wonder his address is a secret... more»
Do you care if that orchid grew in a jungle or a hothouse? No? So you care if that diamond was mined by De Beers or made by a machine?... more»
Is Kansas flat as a pancake? Well, actually, it’s flatter. Pancakes, you see, are not as flat as we all thought. more». Kansans don’t want to know.
Arnold Schwarzenegger puts a bullet into the head of his wife in Total Recall, saying, “Consider that a divorce.” And he expects women’s votes?... more»
Kirk Varnedoe, curator for whom art was as physical and pleasurable as being knocked down by a wave, is dead at age 57... more»
The American way of war: more effective and humane than ever before, says Max Boot. It’s exactly what democracy needs now... more». Or maybe not.
What do dogs want? Food? Affection? A job? Are they moral agents, or con artists, or both? We perhaps love our dogs not wisely but too well... more» ... more» ... more»
Global opposition to the Iraq war is about U.S. dominance. Americans can’t keep saying to the world, “Trust us, we know what we’re doing”... more»
Building the pyramids can be seen on the model of an Amish barn raising, a religious and feasting event. The Pharaoh did build one hell of a barn... more»
Hypochondriacs are sick, just not in the endless ways they imagine. They cost doctors time and drain $20 billion a year from the health system... more»
When the culture of humans finally started to produce art and technology, our brains were actually shrinking. Still, we made it to the moon... more»
There was a melancholy side to James Thurber. “People are not funny,” he said at the end, “they are vicious and horrible, and so is life”... more»
If there is a case for the idea that religion is mental illness, Afghanistan is a virtual casebook of the most florid clinical detail... more»
“Las Vegas is either the most unreal place in the world or the most real place. I’ve lived here 37 years, and I’ve yet to figure out which it is”... more»
Caviar stands for all that is secret, sensual, selfish, and reckless in the Russian soul. It was once illicit and fun. Now it can make you sick... more»
FDR’s Fireside Chats gave people personal sense of the man’s decency. Would he have succeeded as well in an age of television?... more»
Samuel Beckett’s silence, despite its grim, satiric note, is like the silence of holy men who, knowing pain and outrage, strive for peace... more»
Pretty sentences, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Many novels are just essays or glorified diary entries, expanded in length and price... more»
When James Thurber tried to improve one of his crude drawings, E.B. White advised, “Don’t do that. If you ever became good, you’d be mediocre”... more»
Georgi Dimitrov, murderer, toady, puppet premier of Bulgaria put in place by Stalin, had an odd habit for a man in his place: he kept a diary... more»
It took Moses weeks to grasp the fact that a black man, two shades darker than himself, owned him. But then before the Civil War, blacks owned slaves too... more»
Americans, unlike the British, don’t “do” empire, they do leadership instead, or, in more academic parlance, hegemony. Niall Ferguson explains... more»
The Holy Kennedy myth needs a sobbing effort of will, a chorus to demand that the flickering Tinkerbell not expire. We might as well believe in fairies... more»
The mystery of John O’Hara’s personality – snobbish, selfish, cruel, bullying – is why so many people found pleasure in his company... more»
Robert Capa was killed by a land mine near Thai Binh when his leg was blown off and stomach holed. His Nikon survived, its pictures intact... more»
The U.S. in the 20th century was more than FDR, Ike, and JFK. It was also Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley. Oh, Rock ’n’ Roll... more»
“My little Lenin!” said Stalin, tapping Kruschchev’s skull in mockery: “His head is hollow!” But looking stupid was part of Krushchev’s plan... more»
Visiting the Lascaux caves, Pablo Picasso remarked that “we have discovered nothing new in art in 17,000 years.” Maybe he was right... more»
Textbook publishers must be careful. Forefathers, snowman, warrior are forbidden. Also: angry boys, whites living in rich suburbs, yachting... more»
Garrison Keillor has written the best spoof of literary life since Kingsley Amis. Piety and self-righteous sanctimony are his targets... more»
“The East.” Disraeli said, “is a career,” a barbarous source of riches and a huge tract in need of civilizing. Edward Said saw his point... more»
Progress is a war, and always was. Candle makers did not hail the invention of electric lights, nor canal-boat owners praise the railways... more»
Michel Foucault’s influence stems from a deep insight: the history of western civilization is also a history of what it despises and excludes... more»
If Christopher Hitchens’s ideas about justifying the war in Iraq still sound pretty good a full year later, his tone does not... more»
Franz Kafka’s relationships with women had been tricky, on-off affairs. With Dora Diamant, he came close to simple happiness... more»
Did our idea of childhood and parental love exist in the past? Some historians have said no. It begins now to look like they were wrong... more»
Many people have trouble with big words like disparage or disrespect, so they go for dis. The new Merriam-Webster is for them... more»
Neurologists think that the will is an intervention from the spirit-world, or we have no freedom, says Daniel Dennett. They’re wrong... more»
The world was within hours of an act in 1938 that would have rid Germany of Hitler and Nazism – but for a “victory” of diplomacy... more»
Numbers aren’t things, but dwell in a heaven of platonic perfection. Mathematics, it follows, is another country... more»
They fly, swim, burrow, float, trot, walk, jump, gallop, and run. Animal locomotion may be a single field of study, but it uses more than one science... more»
Toppling Mossadegh gave the U.S. and the West a reliable Iran for 25 years. After that came Khomeini and a more haunting legacy... more»
Hanging became unpopular as a means of execution, so justice turned to technology for a new, glamorous, modern way to kill... more»
The mystical tradition of Sufism is a fine alternative for a globalized world. But how strange that Pico Iyer is able to find it in California... more»
Under Ariel Sharon, Israel is bent on curfews, closures, murder, and mass detentions: in short, the politicide of the Palestinians... more»
The March on Washington was the work of Bayard Rustin, brave and eloquent leader of the classical phase of black civil rights protest... more»
Putting professors to shame is what Richard A. Posner excels at. He may be one himself, but he uses academic essentially as a term of abuse... more»
John North enjoys French drama, wine, name-dropping about paintings, good jewelry, proper men’s clothing. But what sort of man is he?... more»
The priestess at Delphi told Croesus that if he attacked the Persians he’d destroy a great empire. The prophecy was true, in its manner... more»
Daniel Pearl had stumbled on the plan for terrorism’s Holy Grail, the ultimate 9/11, says Bernard Lévy. Naturally, he had to die... more»
Women and work: it’s a world of biological clocks and forced choices, in which feminism is either irrelevant or itself the problem... more»
Cruel and brave, incisive yet confused, intimate and distant, angry and cool, Joan Didion’s contradictions lead to hard truth... more»
Why do we wallow in tales of priests and boys, when most targets of unwanted priestly attention are girls? One of the agonies of Catholicism... more»
Sylvia Plath might have been happy, given six children, a faithful husband, domestic help, more money, more acclaim, more luck. Might have... more» ... more»
People move just to get their kids into top-rated Whitney High School. And not just from nearby Los Angeles, but from India, from Korea... more»
Phallic references and penis jokes litter daily discourse. But what of vaginal imagery? Why is it merely rude, or limited to pornography?... | |
