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Are the Democrats too ideological to win elections? Hardly: they’re not ideological enough. What do they want on Iraq, energy, trade, tax cuts, etc., except to criticize the G.O.P.?... more»
A deep desire to avoid conflict once permeated Britain. By 1932 over 10.4 million Britons favored unilateral disarmament, with fewer than a million opposed. It was the English intellectuals... more»
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love,” said Jonathan Swift. God forbid we should hate religion – and law should forbid it too... more»
Diplomacy is not simply the art of persuading others to accept your demands. You must demand what the world can tolerate. Still, you may need military force... more»
John Bayley’s writing shares all the central Iris Murdoch postulates, derived from Aristotle and Kant. But where she is the intellectual, he is the evasive critic... more»
In God’s atemporal view, the act of creation is simultaneous with the moment of your reading this. God doesn’t look back to creation, nor forward to your clicking on... more»
Congress for Cultural Freedom in the 1950s published magazines and held symposia that brought U.S. and foreign intellectuals into contact. A like strategy is needed today... more»
Blacks abandoned in New Orleans “turned to rape and murder.” That is what we were to expect, says Slavoj Žižek... more» ... The media lied and people died... more»
American culture has begun to mimic the chronic nostalgia of certain strains of post-imperial Englishness. Kipling, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis. Yanks do love them all... more»
“What if...” Careful now. If you’re a politician and you float a thought in the antecedent of a conditional, then someone will insist you actually believe it or wish it... more»
The dauphin in the White House, 9/11, Clinton’s amours, Terri Schiavo, Cindy Sheehan. D.C. is made for farce and satire. So why can’t Americans write political fiction?... more»
You doubt that Malcolm X was a paragon of humanitarianism, that gender is a construction, that Native American myth is true? You’re culturally incompetent... more»
George Orwell said it of saints, and it’s only sensible that we should say it say of celebrities: They must all be judged guilty until proven innocent... more»
A world without copyright? “Why, we would have no artistic creations, no entertainment.” Nonsense: we would have more art, and more diverse entertainment... more»
The Holocaust produced conditions for two remarkable events, says Eric Hobsbawm: the creation of Israel and the flowering of Jewish achievement in culture and public affairs... more»
Getting out of a war is a whole lot dicier than getting into one, as Nixon found out and as Bush can attest. Melvin Laird says there are better ways to do it, and worse... more»
Let’s be serious, Prof. Diamond. Does anyone care if Mayan civilization collapsed or not? Compare the Mayans with the Greeks. Now there was a civilization... more»
Journal editor to young academic: “We’ll publish your article, maybe, but you need more citations of articles from our journal. And my editorials. Just a suggestion”... more»
In Survivor, settings look pretty much the same: lots of bathing suits, and bugs, attempts to spear fish, and beach-front shack construction. And why so often the tropics?... more»
Calvin and Hobbes was such an exuberant, strange, and metaphysical realm you wonder how it ever got shoveled into a comic strip... more»
Angst entrepreneurs: the politicians, media outlets, corporations, public health officials, and environmental groups who want to keep us in a continuous state of agitation... more»
Lawrence Summers offered a few mild, speculative remarks about differences between men and women in science and math and was treated as a crank. Was he? Really?... more»
In Michel Foucault’s dark vision, all human institutions, however benign their intent, are products of a will to power. Insane asylums will always be chambers of horrors... more»
French housewives dream that their cooking will bring them happiness and love. So they cook with passion and care, “and then the family wants to go to McDonald’s”... more»
For Fisk, Pilger, Galloway, Tariq Ali and Naomi Klein, terrorism is a problem easily solved: leave Iraq, cut support for Israel, use non-oil energy. Oh, would it were so... more» ... more»
Hans Bethe felt “the most intense relief” that atomic weapons he helped develop had not been used since WWII – but horror that thousands more had been built... more»
The Authoritarian Personality. Are there large numbers of covertly “fascistic” people in the U.S.? In 1950, maybe it seemed so. Today, says Alan Wolfe, well... more»
What if Shakespeare had been born in New Jersey in 1973? As Spear Daddy, his rap would be known for its deep, nuanced ... What if Freud had been a woman? What if you could smell air? What if... more»
In taking on China, the U.S. has one extremely useful strategy: internal subversion. Oops. Max Boot meant to say, “democracy promotion” or “human rights protection”... more»
As the rare upper-middle class white man in prison, Charles Shaw found himself in an alien, self-perpetuating world of poverty, ignorance, and violence. It opened his eyes... more»
The success of a new democracy depends on the openness of a country’s economic system at the time of political transition. Economics first, politics later... more»
Grant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi this much: he is good at exposing the pitilessness on the loose in the fabled “Arab street” and the moral emptiness of official Arab life... more»
Mandarin ruling classes get rather bad press in modern democracies. But do we prefer rule by rival gangs of populists and zealots devoted to Jesus Christ or Adam Smith?... more»
Marriage was once a sacrament, then became a sacred obligation, and at last a private contract. Nietzsche saw it coming, with the family now “a random collection of individuals”... more»
The applicant had the experience he’d need as a chef: he knew how a busy kitchen works, knew the trade lingo. Plus, he even loved Hegel. And, oh yes, he was blind... more»
How does Roman Polanski, who is a fugitive from U.S. justice living in France, manage to sue an American magazine in a British court and win? Vanity Fair’s editor explains... more»
Great works of art never stay the same, says Rupert Christiansen: they ambush and outwit you. “Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale their infinite variety”... more»
Ernest Hemingway needed to destroy a friendship or a marriage every few years just to keep going. In Madrid in the 1930s he did both... more»
Mao Tse-tung’s megalomania and his cruelty still have the power to shock
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Is Palestine the issue? Is it to get the U.S. out of Iraq? No: al-Qaeda’s origins lay in the end of the Cold War, says Faisal Devji... more»
The Victorian class system was oppressive, but can you really find an imperial subtext in Mrs. Beeton’s instructions for carving a turkey?... more»
Franz Liszt’s lady fans kept his hair clippings and pinned his old cigar butts to their persons. He was his age’s greatest pop star... more»
Joe Louis fought for the hopes of his own race and against the Nazis in his match against Max Schmeling. In the end, the two became friends... more»
Why did Adolphe Sax’s horn, the most important recent musical instrument, charm so many? The saxophone... more»
Eudora Welty knew the bizarre and the terrible can’t be cut apart and that given a choice between grief and nothing, she’d take grief... more»
Hinduism is the only major religion with an explicit tradition of agnosticism in it. Don’t underestimate the fact, says Amartya Sen, ... more»
Stalin’s ruinous trust of Hitler was a blunder shared by the western allies: all failed to see the deep ideology in German foreign policy... more»
Every child in every society creates song and dance: it’s a fundamental activity of Homo sapiens. Why and when did music evolve?... more»
Herman Obermayer and his fellow GIs paid little attention to VE-Day. They assumed they’d be sent over to the invasion of Japan... more»
While memory confirms and reinforces itself, says Tony Judt, “history contributes to the disenchantment of the world”... more»
Desperately poor Africans put up with governments that are corrupt and capricious. Does poverty make bad government, or the reverse?... more»
Helen, her arms as milky white as the egg from which she was hatched, was the last of Zeus’ children, and the most fatal... more»
Theodore Dalrymple has found a following on the sarcastic right. If anything, it is the thoughtful left that should be reading him... more»
“Have you noticed Tolstoy’s language?” asked Chekhov. “Enormous periods, sentences piled on each other ... It’s art, and it only comes after hard work”... more»
Will Iraq become a failed state terrorized by warlords, or maybe a future South Korea, not exactly free, but on the road to prosperity?... more»
Madame Bovary’s ovaries spoke to her with urgency. She’s not the only literary character to triumph or to die by Darwinian selection... more»
Why would anybody phone a stranger on prime-time TV to ask if she should leave her boyfriend? Self-help gurus are parasites... more»
Communists went to Tibet to make the Tibetans masters in their own home and build a happy new society. That was Phünwang’s hope... more»
The rape of more than a million German women by Russians was a strictly guarded postwar taboo. Now the world knows, and knows much more... more»
Constanze came into her own after her husband died, shrewd and tireless champion of his music. She was but one of Mozart’s women... more»
The campus novel is a literary genre with its own critical questions. Why are so many shifty women in these books named “Elaine”?... more»
“What do you call six hundred lawyers at the bottom of the sea?” Answer: “A good start.” Why do we get such a kick out of lawyer jokes?... more»
Officers of British India went for tiger hunting and pig-sticking. Most soldiers stayed by the usual pastimes of drinking and whoring... more»
Fewer than half of Americans today have a living memory of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. For them, it was a dawn, but a false one... more»
In his latest, Harold Bloom is again a lazy gardener, tossing seeds of his insights about, but not lingering to see if they sprout into thought... more»
Classical music is in its death throes, orchestras bled dry by greedy unions and greedier soloists. But was it any better fifty years ago?... more»
Fat people are fat because they are troubled. They lose weight, become troubled slim people, gain the fat back and are more troubled than ever... more»
“Call me Ishmael.” This quiet, portentous sentence begins a novel whose eloquence rivals that of the Bible and of Shakespeare... more»
A society of free speech needs lively exchanges of ideas in the middle and not just loud voices from its eccentric fringe... more»
Winston Churchill spent an entire lifetime cutting corners, boasting, and imposing his monumental ego across the entire political scene... more»
There is so much explosive material in Catherine the Great’s life story that it is no surprise later czars wanted to keep a lid on it... more»
A warming earth: watch for all the monsoons, mega-droughts, freezing temps, malaria, dengue fever, and real bad allergies. So much to worry about... more»
Methuselah was onto a good idea, maybe. Can we control cell atrophy and eliminate cancer? Barring accidents, we might live forever... more»
Rosa Parks, fearless lady who refused to go to the back of the bus and changed the world, is dead at the age of 92
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WWI brutalized a Europe that before 1914 promised social progress. Without war neither Bolshevism nor Fascism would have taken hold... more»
Peter Paul Rubens’s feelings for women were edgy and confused. His tastes for plump nudes mask X-rated hungers for sex and violence... more»
Orgasms can kill, tight corsets cause nymphomania and, uh, never fool around sexually with a vacuum cleaner. A little friendly advice... more»
“The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” Milton Friedman believed it 35 years ago and still does. However... more»
The sex in Egon Schiele’s work may be intense, but it is never beautiful enough to seem erotic. Pornographic, perhaps... more» ... more»
Albert Einstein, Ashkenazi Jew and genius, wasn’t alone. So are Ashkenazis smarter than other people? Well, you know, two Jews, three opinions... more»
When Apostolos was a kid, he drifted off into the world of numbers. His tiny village in Greece was boring. Now he’s taking on Google... more»
Maybe a strong belief in gods and spirits gave our ancestors comforts and advantages, says Robert Winston. But what about us?... more»
When the Khmer Rouge were finished, they had murdered, starved, and killed in forced labor a quarter of Cambodia’s population... more»
Dada: legend has it that this bizarre name was chosen in a typically Dada manner: by chance. Using a paper-knife, Hans Arp... more»
Existentialist angst promises a life that’s short, sickly, lonely, and self-obsessed. Start on the road to happiness with a good laugh... more»
Saddam’s palaces were sheer monstrosities, like the ghastly homes of Idi Amin, Mobutu, or Ceausescu. Absolute power corrupts taste, absolutely... more»
It’s tectonic violence that put fossil seashells atop Everest. An angry earth has more in store for peoples of the ever-rising Karakoram range... more»
Harold Pinter, whose plays force “entry into oppression’s closed rooms,” has won the Nobel Prize for Literature... Nobel ...
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Ernst Gombrich wrote his Little History of the World in just six weeks. Its combination of gravity and grace evokes the man himself... more»
Wayne C. Booth, theorist of fiction in general and irony in particular, is dead at the age of 84... more» ... more» ... more» ... more»
The secular left softened up the philosophic ground with its cheap relativism and is now shocked that the right gives us intelligent design... more»
Daniel Drezner has been denied tenure by his University of Chicago department. Was his blogging a factor?... more»
Fads are so yesterday. They’re not cool. “It’s like everybody is hip now. It’s so exhausting. There’s no discovery”... more»
Hurricanes are powerful, but the mighty Mississippi is still the greatest force of nature in the New Orleans region... more»
Cherokees kept black slaves up to 1866. Then their slaves were made full citizens of the tribe. But now it’s time to divide Indian casino profits... more»
Lorenzo Da Ponte’s main fame rests with Mozart. But he got his start in Manhattan from Clement Moore, the “Night Before Christmas” poet... more»
Students who frequently use computers perform more poorly academically than those who use them rarely or not at all. And it gets worse... more»
Shostakovich subtly worked the Soviet arts system with varied messages in his music: defiant, optimistic, crushed, and despondent... more»
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the purest neocon of all?” Rice? Wolfowitz? Cheney? Perle? Kagan? Who else? Take a guess before you click... more»
Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard if it admitted “too many Asians or Jews or pansies or parlor pinks or shy types or short people with big ears”... more»
Popes and preachers were once the main beneficiaries of human gullibility. These days, says Nassim Taleb, it’s stock fund managers... more»
New Orleans badly needs what one Dutch town already has: amphibious houses that float off their foundations in rising waters... more»
How did one classical scholar research his book on ancient Rome? He simply walked the streets of New York... more»
College is fraught with peril for young people. The pressure to party, drink, have sex. And all those non-Christian ideas... more»
German has but one word for “a person who leaves without paying the bill.” But Albanians need twenty-seven words for “moustache”... more»
Samizdat was once a feature of Soviet letters. It lives on in the U.S., in an odd way, on the Internet. Alex Beam explains... more»
T.E. Lawrence’s richly aromatic copy of Joyce’s Ulysses is bound in wine-red leather and gilt and includes the owner’s biscuit crumbs... more»
After 43 years and $568 billion in foreign aid to the continent, Africa remains trapped in economic stagnation. What’s wrong?... more»
Youthful genius goes off so fast these days. Charlotte Church once had “the voice of an angel.” Now she has the mouth of a fishwife... more»
The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are mostly a somber graveyard of dead books. Yet Don Quixote, Carlos Fuentes says, started big and stayed that way... more»
Antarctica is a red state. March of the Penguins “affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing,” says a critic. But some of those penguins are gay... more»
“No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.” Raymond Carver above all loved precise writing... more»
Chimpanzees: the honest politicians we long for. Their world is all Hobbes and Nietzsche, says Frans de Waal. No tiresome “servant of the people” hypocrisy among the chimps... more»
There is a genuine intensity in the suffering of Frida Kahlo. Yet there is something vaguely repulsive in the adulation she receives. Victimhood, after all, is not beatitude... more»
Darwin’s Origin of Species sold out even before release, James Watson explains, with many copies going to Mudie’s Circulating Library. The book was a sensation... more»
“Money doesn’t buy happiness.” Oh, yeah? A strong correlation exists between the wealth of a country and its general level of happiness. But as Aristotle knew... more»
Democracy? Good governance can include many components besides democratic participation, says Francis Fukuyama. Consider the case of Singapore... more»
“Katrina proves people in trouble need big government.” That’s what Gerhard Schröder says, and he is not alone. Anne Applebaum considers the case... more»
Many American academics believe in the redistribution of wealth from the affluent to the poor. So how about from hyper-rich universities to small, struggling colleges?... more»
French intellectuals are often vain; German intellectuals are notoriously obscure; British intellectuals are merely embarrassed – these days, as much as ever... more»
Hating fat Americans is a super-size mistake, says Daniel Ben-Ami. Would it were that poor peoples in Niger or Sudan became rich too, and just as fat... more»
Elaine Showalter has twice shown up in campus novels: as sexy bohemian and as dumpy, judgmental prude. She’d rather be a luscious grape than a withered prune... more»
White academics in New York, says black academic John McWhorter, devised a plan in 1966 to bring more blacks onto welfare rolls. It was a disaster for everyone... more»
Katrina has imperceptibly come to seem the result of human agency, as if failures in planning were evidence of cause. A hurricane has been humanized, made political... more»
Che Guevara’s heroic image adorns mugs, key chains, baseball caps, herbal tea, and a million T-shirts. Is this a triumph for communist politics or capitalist T-shirt makers?... more»
Europe needs a new financial regime aimed at boosting sustainable health and retirement provisions, with a levy on corporations spread across the continent... more»
For Susan Sontag, cinema was once “poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral – all at the same time.” Sadly, she came to think at the end, film’s greatness is lost... more»
Constanze Mozart: a vulgar sex kitten, a bimbo with no grasp of her husband’s incredible gifts? Such notions are wildly unfair to a remarkable woman... more»
Bump and grind: did striptease in the “pre-porn” age empower women or simply exploit them? Maybe a little of both, suggests Rachel Shteir... more»
Jesus sees a crowd about to stone an adulteress. “Stop! Whoever among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” An old lady at the back of the crowd picks up a huge rock... more»
Epicurus proposed “infinite worlds both like and unlike ours.” Kepler thought Jupiter inhabited, and Ben Franklin wondered about people on Mercury. Yet we still wait for E.T.... more»
The Bronx Zoo once had an exhibit called “the world’s most dangerous creature.” It was a mirror. Are we so bad, compared with other animals? David Barash wonders... more»
If the hardest thing in life is that your husband won’t pick up the dry cleaning, do you want to hang on till death do us part? “Why I’m divorced – and why you’re next”... more»
Darwin doesn’t explain everything that perplexes biologists. But, hey, intelligent design doesn’t even try. As putative science, it’s a straight-out hoax... more» ... more» ... more» ... more»
Till the 18th century, Scots, like other Europeans, saw distilled spirits as medicine. Then a few of them started to drink whisky for fun... more»
From Voltaire and David Hume to Robt Ingersoll and Clarence Darrow, atheism used to be on the march, religion on the back foot. Times change... more»
She was dazzled by Sartre’s brilliance as a philosopher. For Simone de Beauvoir, terms like “essence” or “contingency” worked like a diamond ring... more»
City of floods: graceful Venice has survived such calamities as fires, plagues, and war. No U.S. city has ever had to endure the like... more»
“Can something be achieved in that is worthy of the sacrifice in Iraq?” George Packer badly wants that the answer will turn out to be yes... more» ... more»
Mathilde Kschessinska: prima ballerina assoluta, mistress of Czar Nicholas II – a woman of vast skill, massive energy, and implacable willfulness... more»
If we ever find out that a basic tenet of Buddhism is shown false by science, we simply must give it up. Who said it? The Dalai Lama... more»
The FDA bans absinthe, as it is “adulterated” with wormwood. Still, U.S. customs agents will typically ignore a bottle or two in your suitcase... more»
Joakim Garff’s Kierkegaard bio has been hailed as “brilliant.” It is full of errors and passages copied from other biographers. So what?... more» ... more»
Don’t be shocked at the sad fate of the Big Easy. History is littered with “eternal” cities brought low by flood, plague, or man-made disaster... more»
Wine vocabulary gushes with allusions to fruit and flowers. Now the French have added a new adjective of disdain: Parkerisé... more»
Strom Thurmond: his politics were usually simple, but often complex. His libido made his personal life always complex... more»
Family supper combines two deep needs, for nourishment and for connection. Ritual dining together is a crucial support for family life... more»
The war on terror is eroding the founders’ ingenious system of checks and balances: empire begets an imperial president... more»
“Like Tocqueville,” writes John Lukacs, “I do not know why God chose to have mankind enter the democratic age” Make voting harder, maybe... more»
Carey McWilliams reinvented The Nation’s internal culture and managed to revive the muckraking tradition in American journalism... more»
Should we view female orgasm as an evolutionary by-product of male orgasm, a tag-along trait for the ladies? Shades of Adam’s rib... more»
Edmund Wilson: his range was astonishing, his intuition keen, his taste impeccable, his prose bold and lucid. What a critic... more» ... more»
When Iranian mullahs chose Salman Rushdie for their murderous fatwa, they knew what they were doing. Look at his newest book... more»
Asian autocrats tend to invest their graft-takings in the lands they rule. African tyrants just walk off with the money... more»
We cannot ignore religious belief systems, says Jürgen Habermas. But they must be able to see the world from other perspectives... more»
Hurricane Rita: fruit of global warming, a catastrophe we have made for ourselves. But is it, really? Why not check a few facts?... more»
“Free markets will create free societies.” It may be true in general, but it has yet to be proven for the Chinese, who still need their censors... more»
In 1992, a scruffy old Russian in shabby clothes arrived at a British embassy pulling a battered case on wheels. The former KGB archivist... more»
Robert Trivers loves the logic of evolution. Darwin gave us a geometry of time as beautiful as the geometry of space of Newton and Galileo... more»
Should local folk rebuild New Orleans as it was? Probably it is not a bad idea, says Carlin Romano. Quite possibly, it is a catastrophic one... more»
Simon Wiesenthal, a man who was relentless in his will to hunt down Nazis, is dead at the age of 96... NYT ... LAT ... Wash Post
Academic anthropology is in crisis, says Dan Sperber, who is not alarmed. “It deserves to be in crisis. It deserves to explode, let it do so”... more»
“The semicolon is ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly, I pinch them out of my prose,” says Donald Barthelme. Other writers disagree... more»
What they’re reading at the kitchen table. Home-schoolers of all stripes find common ground in superb but nearly forgotten books... more»
The honorable paparazzo: he only takes photos that stars want to see before the public. “My whole career is based on trust”... more»
Angela Merkel’s genius is to have realized that Germany is suffering from a bad case of wounded pride. And that’s not all she wants to fix... more»
However badly disordered his private life, Arthur Koestler left behind an absorbing body of work for anyone who enjoys the battle of ideas... more»
Sure, it’s naive to think that all moral beliefs are universal. But there may be an innate “moral sense” across cultures... more»
Ask what adjective goes best with “professor,” and the answer will likely be “absent-minded,” or maybe “nutty.” With good reason... more»
NASCAR dads are flag-waving yahoos who only like the races for the beer and the crashes. Or so left-liberal wimp Jack Burditt thought... more»
Stem cell flambé. Coming to a market near you, sooner or later: t-bone steaks grown in a chemist’s lab... more»
Extreme sports challenge our sissified, safety-first, shrink-wrapped world! Oh, do they now? Horse riding is still more dangerous... more»
Thinking the unthinkable: how about not rebuilding New Orleans? Jack Shafer makes the case... more» ... Joel Garreau adds a bit of history ... Joel Kotkin says look at Houston ... Simon Rozendaal recalls Holland, 1953
From Russia’s dark history of wars, repression, and hunger has emerged a generation of amazing, stunningly beautiful girls... more»
“How could a Negro put pen to paper,” asked Irving Howe, without some impulse to protest? For Ralph Ellison, Howe had it all wrong... more»
Olaudah Equiano’s memoir is a pillar of scholarship on slave narratives and the African diaspora. But is some of it fake?... more»
Technologies of guns, steel swords, and cannon enabled Pizzaro to conquer the Incas. But the fight was not quite so unequal... more»
America’s early history – its political divisions, economics, and moral crusades – is closely linked with evangelical religion... more»
“Curry” is a generic term that Indians don’t use. In the West, it is a glorious bastard cuisine, mixing bits and pieces that come to hand... more»
“Oh, Herr Wagner, don’t you think in music the rudiment of potential infinite pain is subtly woven into the tissue of our keenest joy?”... more»
Smallpox was eradicated when doctors and later the WHO made vaccination compulsory. Such ideas no longer fit the liberal state. Yet... more»
The U.S. bears heavy costs to deal with the world’s violent backwaters, but pacifist Europe may reap the profits... more»
Michel Houellebecq goes right to his anatomical point in his new novel. Within three pages he’s up a woman’s dress... more»
Oscar Wilde discovered he was gay only after he married and fathered children. That anyway has been the accepted line... more»
In the American Revolution, King George promised freedom to any slave who fought for him against slave-owner rebels. It’s a sad story... more»
Francis Bacon, barrister, M.P., and scholar, even had time to write Shakespeare’s plays. Busy guy. Or was it Marlowe after all?... more»
Matisse: self-invented painter, a man who enters art history essentially from nowhere, as if by parachute... more»
General de Gaulle asked how anyone could govern a nation that had 246 kinds of cheese. His solution: be the biggest cheese. Ah, France... more»
In 1932, young Pavel Morozov denounced his own father for hoarding grain, was murdered by kulaks, and became Soviet Boy Hero. Ah, but the truth... more»
Happy, gregarious Einstein got on well with Kurt Gödel, “very solemn, serious, solitary, and distrustful of common sense”... more»
Vincent van Gogh, who loved Japanese art, might have felt a special kinship with Hokusai, who also made very little money in his lifetime... more»
North Korea lives “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader.” Sounds pretty good. So what’s to complain about?... more»
Why did Roger Scruton, a precocious youth typical of the 1960s generation, turn against the spirit of his times with such ferocity?... more»
When an avant garde attains success it is institutionalized, routinized, and trivialized. For example, literary theory... more»
An academic philosopher in search of the quiddity of bullshit has a wide open field. “Very little work has been done on the subject”... more»
Neither Mary Wollstonecraft nor Madame de Staël ever said, “I work hard and I love hard.” But they well might have... more»
“Fiction,” Eudora Welty said, “has, and must keep, a private address.” When public events moved her, she didn’t take her own advice... more»
”The problem of Islam as a political force is an essential one for our time,” wrote Michel Foucault. Don’t start “from a position of hatred”... more»
Pinch a female cochineal insect, and blood-red dye pours out. Apply it to cloth, and the fabric will remain red for centuries... more»
Alec Guinness: deeply literate, an inspired entertainer and wit, elegant, buoyant stylist – and master of concealment... more»
“How does one work in a team and ‘help the other fellow’ when so much is fueled by envy, jealousy, and greed?” asks Michael Eisner. Gosh, Mike... more»
Translate the Bible, but don’t try to “explain” it with your translation: you’ll just trivialize its grand solemnity and epic sweep... more»
Søren Kierkegaard rebuked the Christianity of his day: rather than get rid of the whorehouse, it preferred to baptize it... more»
Christopher Hitchens is a man whose passion outruns his reason. He can be fun to read and to argue with, but... more»
Jimi Hendrix’s sexual antics and stage gimmicks, such as smashing his guitar, were too much. But, oh, his musical imagination... more»
The extraordinary Gannibal, dark star of the Enlightenment, African great-grandfather of Aleksandr Pushkin... more»
Between Orient and Occident there is a long sequence of interaction and fusion. It is a historic world Tariq Ali knows well... more»
The Tree of Life, with its vast numbers of roots and branches, living and extinct, poses the ultimate puzzle for Darwinian science... more»
In 1857 there had been rumors of something afoot in north India: conspiracies passed by chapati, of secret signals in lotus flowers... more»
When Louis XIV’s reign ended, the French were the absolute arbiters of style and taste in the world. France ruled the luxury trade... more»
“The great unmentionable evil” at the heart of our culture. Isn’t this all rather hysterical? Is religion really that awful?... more»
Farm animals are distressed by things people do not notice: hissing sounds, flapping clothes on a line, a moving piece of plastic... more»
Karl Ulrichs, a German lawyer, was the first modern European to openly declare as gay. Oscar Wilde read him... more»
Georges Braque painted, he said, so that he could hang his ideas on a nail. That nail made the whole house teeter... more»
You’re in the religion biz and you discover one day that your company’s oldest, most trusted product doesn’t actually exist. What do you do?... more»
Erwin Schrödinger was moved by an aesthetic impulse toward a final beauty, the equation of all equations... more»
Soviet-era jokes tell a history: “What is Khrushchev’s hair style called?” “The harvest of 1963”... more»
It is unthinkable that the U.S. might now surrender the keystone state of the Middle East to an alliance of bin Ladenists and Baathists, says Christopher Hitchens... more»
If the U.S. is serious about making a democracy in Iraq, and attempts it under current policies, it would take two generations of soldiers fighting there. That’s 40 years... more»
The British enjoy eccentricity. Yanks, a louder race, don’t. Americans are by nature exhibitionists. Tunku Varadarajan explains a deep and persistent cultural divide... more»
Some people would be miserable without horseriding; others would wither away if they were forbidden their computers; others live to shop. Hester Lacey loves books... more»
Democracy allows that we are led by very ordinary, even ignorant, people. If they keep their stupidities to themselves, okay. President Bush’s ignorance of science... more»
Dante: a postcolonial writer for an age when the Bible, you see, was a kind of “spiritual miracle diet.” Dante criticism plumbs new depths of idiocy, Helen Vendler shows... more»
It’s a dire situation, chaps. You’re outperformed by girls at school, emasculated by women at home and work, butt of endless jokes: women rule and men are fools... more»
Metal detectors at airports did not turn the U.S. into a police state. Neither will national identity cards and police cameras on every corner. Libertarians, take note... more»
More than ever, al Qaeda militants have a global, non-territorial vision of jihad. Their goal is not to liberate the Middle East but simply to combat the world order as they see it... more»
Original thinking can flourish under conditions of intellectual marginality. Conservative thought was once marginal. Now it’s mainstream, and increasingly dumbed down... more»
Should mere pundits take the rap when the administration’s Iraq policy goes wrong? When their sophistic arguments helped sell and sustain it, yes... more»
“A Muslim rapist I know wanted to be a suicide bomber, having been convinced the West was rotten to the core, since it took the word of a mere woman against his”... more»
Editing is a bloody trade. But knives aren’t the exclusive property of butchers. Surgeons use them too. Blake Morrison defends editors... more»
The Frankenstein story is a central myth of modern biology, making science a sinister substitute for God the creator. No wonder Hollywood loves it... more»
Writers conferences. Creative folks coming together to talk about being creative. And getting grants. It all leaves Kay Ryan just a tad queasy... more»
Foreign aid: instead of being based on how good it made a donor nation feel, what if it were assessed by what it did for the world’s poor?... more»
Intelligent design is the latest version of religious pseudoscience, cleverly crafted by a new group of creationists to get around legal restrictions... more»
Pessimism can be a mere pose, a kind of inertia, a laziness of mind and spirit. Optimism accepts human adaptability, writes the optimistic Andrew Sullivan... more»
Einstein’s moral clarity, his idea that we need a theory with a coherent view of all events, means we must reject current theoretical physics... more»
There will always be a Leningrad: the courage in the face of Hitler’s siege insures that. But there will always be a St. Petersburg too... more»
A perfect tradition of Islam will make perfect fatwas and perfect Muslims free of sin. So perfect Muslims can murder deviant Muslims. Ziauddin Sardar explains... more»
Bismarck once said that God looks after fools, drunks, children, and the U.S.A. Did God disorient Palm Beach voters in 2000, in order to push a neocon agenda?... more»
A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and Hedda Gabler: Henrik Ibsen mounted a ferocious, and very modern, attack on marriage as a source of human misery and frustration... more»
Economists take note: you do not work in a human vacuum. The economy is as much a set of social relations as a family or a religion. Virginia Postrel explains... more»
“I have felt it myself,” Freeman Dyson said. “The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist: an illusion of illimitable power.”... more»
Abraham Lincoln is a colossus, and the arrows his Lilliputian critics shoot at him bounce to the ground. Not even George Washington is in quite the same class... more»
The global market for Hollywood films is people raised on cartoons, TV, and Nintendo. They prefer spectacle to story, car crashes to catharsis... more»
“Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her jewelry when she sees a robber in a neighbor’s house,” says Mathias Doepfner... more»
Writers, Edmund Wilson came to think, had been corrupted by “the two great enemies of literary talent in our time: Hollywood and Henry Luce”... more»
Obese Americans these days tend to outsource attractiveness, and thinness in particular, to movie stars. Beauty still counts, but... more»
Post-internet media: more varied, more polarized, more sensational, more skeptical, says Richard Posner. So does it give us a more thoughtful public? Well... more» ... more»
The sheer rarity of uninterrupted speech makes it so arresting, says David Hare: it explains the recent revival in the fortunes of the public lecture... more»
Anonymous terrorists do that to a city: suddenly you have to act the cop – or maybe feel like the suspect. Especially if you happen to resemble “a Muslim”... more»
From both a strictly Muslim and an Evangelical Christian point of view it is not each other’s religion that is perverted, but the modern world itself... more»
Breast implants for teenagers? Surgical hymen reconstruction? Rape-themed fashion collections? It’s the ugly side of beauty... more»
Is anti-Semitism a form of racism? Not really, says Paul Johnson. It is an intellectual disease: infectious, massively destructive... more»
Okay, an early withdrawal by the U.S. from Iraq would be a disaster. And on balance, the invasion has done more good for the Middle East than harm. Still, says Michael Young... more»
In a rational world, does tradition have a future? Will we one day view tradition as we view the myths of the ancients – quaint and amusing?... more»
Will Gravity’s Rainbow be dated in years to come, or will it pass Ezra Pound’s test of being news that stays news? Who can tell?... more»
“If Britain is such an unwelcoming, racist place to live, why do all races continue to flock here, as they do to evil, imperialist America?” Julie Burchill asks... more» ... The U.K. has a big problem, explained here.
“It’s not natural to be a writer, it’s not natural to be an artist,” he says. Yet Julian Barnes is both and writer and an artist, quite naturally... more»
Hitler did not redress injustices of war reparations against Germany, he used them to feed his megalomania. The preachers of Islamist terror care less about dignity and more... more»
Quoth the Raven, “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just having a cheese snack out of this can.” Little liar! Deceitful birds teach humans a thing or two... more»
He challenges French views on welfare, immigration, and tax relief, and admires Tony Blair. Why is Nicolas Sarkozy so popular in France?... more»
In the United States, explains Peter Singer, any “common farming practice” is legal, whether it’s cruel or not... more»
“Falling in love is basically a process where both sides feel they’re getting a good deal.” And evolution tells us how to assess the deal... more»
Katrina is a lesson for the U.S., says Germany’s Environment Minister. Hey, Germans, who helped you out after a war sixty years ago that you, uh, failed to prevent?... more»
Abe Zapruder, most famous of home movie buffs, gave history a priceless document, and he is not alone. Home movie makers offer us treasures... more»
We learn more about Russians from War and Peace than from any other book. But above all, this huge novel moves us by its sheer beauty... more»
The brilliant Lolita, now round and ripe at 50 years old, tells us artists can’t live in the real world as they live in the world of words... more»
Kids should not be allowed to bring birthday cakes to school. All that fat and sugar makes for heart disease. As usual, pleasure is bad for you... more»
Walter Benjamin spoke of “the thrill of acquisition.” But when all is instantly available online, the thrill is gone. Goodbye, Rock Snobs... more»
Golf features no body contact, no cheerleaders, and no car crashes, yet men still make up 80% of the golf’s TV audience. Why?... more» ... more»
Sure, true friendship between Beijing and Washington is unlikely. But their interests are so intertwined that there is no alternative to cooperation... more»
He was a virtuoso pianist who could toss off Liszt at will. Or maybe he could play only one note. The next David Helfgott? Seems not... more»
If Michel Houellebecq calls Islam “the stupidest religion in the world,” well, after all, he was drunk. It’s when he writes about sex... more»
When he was given the chance to write art criticism for The Nation, Arthur Danto felt “like Lana Turner being discovered at a soda fountain”... more»
In Finland, everyone has an equal shot at life, liberty, and happiness. Yes, this is normally supposed to be an American ideal, but... more»
Piracy has a long and brutal history. How it has been treated in law makes a useful precedent for terrorism... more»
The humanities are ruined, the universities full of crooks. Art is neglected, coddled, and buried under chatter. Camille Paglia has her say... more»
Finger lengths? Fruit flies? Gay sheep? Homosexuality is still a mystery today, but it likely won’t remain so forever... more»
Russian police may promise to crack down on hate crimes. But they routinely arrest dark-skinned people and even beat and torture them... more»
Flip that mattress! First take off the sheets and pillows. Now don’t forget to vacuum it. And a Ph.D in mathematics will help, too... more»
Where do endangered species thrive? Green German National Parks, or bombed, burned, and tank-rutted U.S. Army bases?... more»
Dog vs. machine. One can sniff, the other detect. So which makes the best tool for the war on terror?... more»
Scavengers living at the edge of Mexico City’s dump have it tough. But consider the plight of their animals... more»
Is planet earth just an Enron, an affair of dollars and cents? Carl Pope of the Sierra Club strikes out at Bjørn Lomborg... more»
NASA sends drinking water up to the Space Station for $40,000 a gallon. So what should the astronauts do? Drink their own urine? Hey, wait... more»
Walt Disney used to joke that he’d one day get rid of his small corps of animators who drew by hand. Sadly, that day has arrived... more»
Aspects of symbols that seem intuitively obvious to adults can confuse infants and young children: they conflate the real item and its symbol... more»
Your average Sunday NFL game contains more patriotic overkill than a USO show in Kuwait. What is it with sports and politics?... more»
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