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The Republican Party’s silence on matters of race keeps it out of present trouble, John Derbyshire grants. “But I believe it stores up future trouble”... more»
Seeing some redneck U.S. soldier, Günter Grass was not shocked, “but, suddenly, I discovered racism.” So an SS member who’d grown up under Hitler had at last discovered racism... more»
It was unsurprising, yet momentous, that the peoples of the Middle East seemed least able to understand the meaning of the 9/11 attacks. Michael Young explains... more»
The masterpieces of modern Western art held in Tehran may be worth billions and are too expensive to be destroyed. But who knows? And where is Barbara Rose’s leg?... more»
Liberal intellectuals are censoring themselves today in the name of the War on Terror, says Tony Judt. They should be disturbing the peace – above all, their own... more»
The failure to prevent the 9/11 attack was a “failure of imagination.” A like failure leads many today to discount the risk of a nuclear 9/11. They should think again... more»
Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech cost him his career and for decades made immigration an undiscussable issue in Britain... more» ... The speech
Public intellectuals will survive and prosper because of the deep need of ordinary people for “guidance about how to live.” Anyway, that’s what some intellectuals hope... more»
High above and beyond saving, in their last seconds they sent their words into the sky in cellphones. “I love you,” they said to wives. “I love you,” they told children. “I love you”... Jimmy Breslin
... Martin Amis
... Jason Burke
... Brendan Simms
... Gerard Baker
... Paul Kelly
... John Negroponte
... Frank Furedi
... Rami Khouri
... Hassan Nafaa
... Peter Nicholson
... George Will
... Bruce Bawer
... Suzanne Fields
... Tod Lindberg
... Salim Mansur
... Andrew Sullivan
... Christopher Hitchens
The passions that animated early scientists were a sense of wonder at life in its fullness and the mystery of nature. In our narrow age, scientists still seek glory, but... more»
The Spanish Civil War taught Albert Camus that “one can be right and be beaten.” Is there an analogy between Spain in 1936 and Iraq in 2006?... more»
In 1950, U.S. soldiers massacred tens of thousands of innocent people in the North Korean city of Sinchon, including burning 300 women and children alive. Or maybe not... more»
Your typical sub-Saharan country is overrun with Western charities, crawling with white do-gooders, awash with philanthropic funds. So why don’t... more»
Ramin Jahanbegloo has been freed from an Iranian jail. He admits his many mistakes, and now sees the “faults” of U.S. democracy... more» Iran to purge its universities.
Is it a crazy, poetic sense of humor that puts the English ahead of the French? With the English, says Marc Levy, it’s humor that always wins. With the French, it’s ego... more»
Bruce Springsteen is leading listeners to sounds and sentiments so old, pure, and eclectically American that their power is timeless. Ron Radosh explains... more»
America’s private pension system is in crisis. Hundreds of thousands of retired workers have seen promised health-care benefits vanish. G.M. alone is $40 billion behind... more»
Hegel, Gramsci, and Sartre indicate the route to a new global order through the chaotic dissolution of the Western imperial state. Malcolm Bull explains... more»
Laugh at mumbo-jumbo and magic in up-country Ghana or Sulawesi, if you will. But the dreams of globalizers aside, tribalism is here to stay... more»
How do people of African descent, scattered around the world, see their ancestral home? Is the idea of the African diaspora a reality or just wishful thinking?... more»
Michel Foucault is canonized as the messiah of French antihumanism, an intrepid prophet of the “death of man.” This perception now seems wrong, says Richard Wolin... more»
The Bush Doctrine declared war on terror and sets an ideal of democracy for all – the peoples of Iraq and the whole of the Middle East. Is the Bush Doctrine dead?... more»
In any bookstore, you’ll find books about masterly men conquering evil. Men read these. Novels about, uh, feelings and stuff – well, that’s chick-lit. Right?... more»
The New York Times’s strategy for the future sees a doomsday scenario: a one-newspaper nation, with the Times the last man standing... more»
Boomergeddon. “If you want the God’s honest truth, baby boomers are the most obnoxious people in the history of the human race”... more»
Gratitude, central to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, is largely absent from our secular culture. Life without God is robbed of much of its coherence and meaning... more»
Buffoonery or requiem mass – or both? Lenin, among many others, wanted to know what Dada was all about. But not even Marcel Duchamp was certain... more»
The Age of Empiricism: the media, blogs, and the web have created a new kind of information market: open, critical, and less reliant on a priesthood of experts... more»
The 1911 Britannica, one of the finest encyclopedias ever produced, is great recreation for the mind – an intoxicating blend of deep erudition and unexpected facts... more»
Robert Hughes’s wife, Danne, gave him a strain of the clap that she’d likely picked up from Jimi Hendrix. It was so antibiotic resistant, it almost outlived Hendrix himself... more»
Ancient documents alleging God’s existence are preliterate and not supported by science. Nice poetry, but who takes them seriously? Not Paul Kurtz... more»
Government policy in Britain for the last 40 years has been de facto to render the British people defenseless against criminals and crime... more»
Is Latin America willing to sacrifice some of its traditional Iberian “virtues” in order to develop and, yes, get rich. Or is that too American and “materialistic”?... more»
For the first time since the Ottoman Turks were hurled back at Vienna in 1683, Europe is gripped by dark visions of a Muslim invasion. But really, what’s the worry?... more»
Plato’s Republic meanders along, its arguments leaky, its psychology odd, its politics appalling. But its power cannot be doubted... more»
“We are all Hezbollah now.” Oh, are we? As members of the British Stop the War movement marched against the U.S. and Israel, feminist Sarah Baxter looked on... more»
Trivia books – which strip meaning from knowledge, giving us info, but the not the context we need to apply it – are part of a general dumbing down. Call it Jolt Culture... more»
Lasting political change – from the end of slavery to woman’s suffrage to Social Security – starts on a radical fringe before it rules the center. Today, the fringes... more»
Why are some Muslim corpses light as a feather, while others weigh tons? Die in a Baghdad market, and you barely make the news, while the bomb that killed 28 in Qana... more»
The West does not yet find itself in a crisis war, says John Derbyshire. But in a few years, with nukes in the hands of monsters, we might reach a turning point. Then all hell... more»
Richard Dawkins is dismissed as a bully, but he only puts theology to the same scrutiny that science must withstand... more»
Impressionism had a deep effect on art and taste and spawned a vast library of books. Not to mention an ocean of gossip... more»
Marie Antoinette’s story is one of spunk, grit, sex, and a giddy fatalism that speaks to us today. Camille Paglia explains... more»
Like Hitler, Shakespeare has about him faked diaries and forged testaments. The man to sort it out: Ron Rosenbaum... more» A new search engine for the Bard.
Is Bob Newhart the funniest person on the face of the planet? Well, if your tastes run to a highbrow but low-key style of humor... more»
Michel Houellebecq’s novels are filled with essentially pornographic sex involving willing women and hapless, repellent males... more»
The Gallimard family made Albert Camus and a Gallimard, driving a car in which he was a passenger, killed him... more»
You cannot sensibly talk about Constitutional rights in relation to terrorism, says Richard Posner, without an idea of what terror might achieve, and how... more»
He barely got through high school, and began work as a set carpenter. But Joseph Volpe ended up head of the Metropolitan Opera... more»
Eudora Welty said she often dreamed in galley proofs, and the struggle of the dream was to try to make corrections... more»
Daniel Dennett’s fine book on religion is unlikely to reach the audience he wants – his decent, civil, morally serious Christian neighbors... more»
From his Catholic boyhood Robert Hughes kept what was aesthetically valuable, from his ’60s youth he rejected what was intellectually vapid... more»
The 9/11 Commission Report has now been turned into a comic book. Is a Happy Meal tie-in just around the corner?... more» ... more»
So many times in the decade before 9/11, bin Laden just managed averted death and Al Qaeda almost splintered. But not quite... more»
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was more than a prophet: he was a composer of real achievement. His music still gives pleasure... more»
SARS can be traced to a man who butchered wild animals behind a restaurant in China. Amid the blood and excreta of his panicked victims... more»
Scientists who disagree tend to talk: they do not blow each other up. Science encourages doubt; religions quash it, as Frederick Crews knows... more»
The grisly death of Theo van Gogh should have a lesson for us all. Just seems that Ian Buruma isn’t sure what it is... more»
John Winthrop, Abe Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, Martin Luther King: all spoke with the prophetic American voice, says Greil Marcus... more»
Gustave Flaubert sailed up the Nile, spending a steamy night in Esna with an Egyptian courtesan: such material would feed his novels... more»
The Crusades were peaceful pilgrimages at the start, acts of penance. When pilgrims were attacked on the way, they took up arms for protection... more»
Brian Morton knows too much to be taken in by the myth of the New York intellectual. His characters are writers failed and forgotten... more»
Blue jeans are the “crowning product of American celebrity culture and the frontier spirit.” Jeans have Deep Meaning, and so forth, blah, blah... more»
Dylan nil a me alienum puto, as Terence might have put it: nothing having to do with Bob Dylan can be alien to me, says Louis Menand... more»
Joseph Stiglitz is eloquent on market failures. But for him, state failure, dictatorship, and corruption are easily let off the hook... more»
Americans may be religious people, but they don’t have much use for the idea of sin. It went missing along with the idea of hell fire... more»
Londonistan. Some people seem to think terrorism in the modern world is essentially a problem with Islam. Yet more racism?... more»
Das Kapital is literature, with elements of the Gothic novel, Victorian melodrama, black farce, Greek tragedy and satirical utopia... more»
The West may have been won by good-ol’ American blood and sweat, but the deed was financed largely by perfidious foreign capital... more»
Italy totters along in a state of amiable chaos, its situation desperate but not serious. Italians like it that way... more»
You might expect diaries of the Stalin period to be places where Russians wrote their private torments. Not always so... more»
“Once upon a time” used to be a gateway for children to a land of timeless stories with important lessons. No more... more»
The Story of O presents a tale beyond pornography, showing us something only rarely seen: a vivid picture of one woman’s erotic core... more»
Thomas Young explained how we see, proved Newton wrong, cured the sick, and deciphered the Rosetta Stone. And that’s just for starters... more»
Of the millions who shared the fate of Nina Lugovskaya under Stalin, only a tiny fraction left behind a record of what they went through... more»
Heinrich Böll’s question still haunts Germany today: was May 1945 the defeat of Germany, or its liberation?... more»
Ancient Britons: brutal, naked, ignorant, murderous, ululating slobs for whom the arrival of Romans was a blessing. Or maybe not... more»
Spiritualism: far from giving us anything that looked like wisdom, it offered the most banal advice, supported by parlor tricks... more»
Wild children intrigue and enthrall because they seem to offer a glimpse of the natural man that lies beneath culture’s encrustations... more»
Ann Coulter says liberals have devised a new atheist religion, with sacraments of abortion, feminism, coddling criminals, and sex with dogs!... more»
Before computers, science still needed number-crunchers. It found them in the quick minds of highly talented and under-rewarded women... more»
Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein set the table for NYC’s left intellectuals for 40 years. They were the Ma and Pa of the intelligentsia... more»
Plagiarism is on the rise, and it’s not just about students’ term papers. Consider the sordid case of Ann Coulter... more»
Fiery passion and brutal honesty characterized the work of the the late Oriana Fallaci... London Times
... Reuters
... NYT
... AP (1)
... AFP
... Guardian
... WSJ
... LAT
... Wash Post
... New Yorker (June)
... AP (2)
... Daniel Pipes
Celebrities are narcissists, to be sure. But does the fame make the narcissism? It seems not, a new study purports to show... more»
They started as ways to mock the Führer, and ended more as gallows humor. Hitler jokes in Nazi Germany... more»
Empires drive history. But in the last hundred years they don’t seem to have had much of a shelf life, says Niall Ferguson... more»
Quantum mechanics. Sure, it’s weird, but is it really all that unintelligible? Paul Quincey offers a new and surprising answer... more»
It has the highest subscription renewal rate of any magazine in the country, with over a million readers. David Remnick’s New Yorker... more»
The evolutionary benefits of our affinity for food and sex are easy to explain, but music is trickier. What’s the survival value of music?... more»
Why was the Air Force stood down on 9/11? Did a missile get the Pentagon? Were the Twin Towers bombed? Why did WTC7 collapse?... more» ... more» ... more» ... more»
Vladimir Tretchikoff, the man whose paintings came for many people to define the very idea of kitsch, is dead at the age of 92... more»
So let’s see. A planet is now to be understood as an object large enough to clear smaller bodies from its orbit. Tough luck for Pluto... more»
Al-Jazeera is a new chapter in the evolution of the Arab media – an area where “television journalism” was once an oxymoron... more»
Would you put on an old sweater for ten bucks – if you knew it had been worn by a mass murderer? Are you superstitious?... more»
Conrad Black’s media empire is in a shambles, his assets are being auctioned off by court order. Yet he’s has not been convicted of a single crime... more»
Tech jobs grow on trees in India, where outsourcing has given way to a worker’s market. But for grad schools, India needs the U.S.... more»
Catastrophe postponed: the IPCC is scaling back its scare scenarios for global warming, says a secret paper leaked to The Australian... more» ... more»
He opposed multiculturalism and was fired for his efforts. Now 20 years later, a British headmaster feels vindicated – and bitter... more»
Cleopatra – the gratification of every conceivable desire – has been remade over and again by writers, artists and film-makers... more»
A half century after the birth of rock ’n’ roll, a primitive six-stringed instrument remains the pre-eminent tool of pop culture... more»
The fall of Easter Island. In the famous view of Jared Diamond, it is a parable of reckless use of scarce resources. In reality... more»
Vasily Grossman was a steady writer who never set out to dazzle readers. But what depth and substance in his great work, Life and Fate... more»
Greenland gained its name in the warm Middle Ages. Today, crops are once again starting to flourish there... more»
“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” Arthur Miller once mused. Maybe the internet does that even better... more»
Muslim radicals have evolved an Islamist way of war that is as complex as it is cunning. The West must find new means to counter it... more»
Bloodthirsty chimps, sex-crazed bonobos, the origins of family, feuding and friendship: Frans de Waal on our near relations... more»
The recent surge of power of evangelicals in the U.S. is recasting American foreign policy. How bad is this news?... more»
The Poincaré conjecture. Has it been solved by a shy opera lover who lives with his mother in St. Petersburg?... more»
The Chinese village of Dafen has it own Louvre. There’s Michelangelo’s David, art of the Pharaohs, and all the French masters... more»
That title, How to Win Friends and Influence People, is just a tad creepy. But Dale Carnegie’s book still speaks to us today... more»
The sinking of the Andrea Doria in the 1956 collision with the Stockholm was the last great drama of the age of Atlantic passenger liners... more»
Can atomic power be green? Physics suggests that it can, in the form of the safe, sensible thorium reactor... more»
Celebrity philanthropy is yet another scene of human vanity, to be sure. But it has its comic side and, besides, there are worse sins... more»
Clara Schumann was a deeply strange woman, but she was also a deeply attractive one. Certainly to the young Johannes Brahms... more»
Çatalhöyük was a Neolithic town, but oddly shows no evidence of public spaces. It had no streets, but was piled with trash... more»
Want to be a dissident in Cuba? For you, that country has its version of the pillory. The government hires thugs who... more» ... more»
Patina and dirty varnish once marked Rembrandt’s works as masterpieces. What a surprise when a cleaned Night Watch showed up a daylight scene... more»
The U.K. media may portray Muslim fundamentalists as “backward” people, but the British government made them what they are... more»
David Hume wrote that reason is a “slave to the emotions.” But new research suggests that reason and emotion tend toward robust debates... more»
As an event, 9/11 was a perfect entry point into the softness and indulgence that mass media most like to exploit. It’s been a long funeral... more»
The notion that the West has achieved preeminence by force and pillage, or by exploiting Muslim oil, fits a common Islamist mindset... more»
Günter Grass has all his life nagged his fellow Germans: never, ever forget! Funny that he’s only now found that he can remember... more»
Hugo Chávez once attacked the idea of Francis Fukuyama that free votes and free markets were the “end of history.” The future, he said, would see the advent of “Chavismo”... more»
Beyond artistic talent, an art forger needs skills of an art historian, restorer, and chemist. Han van Meegeren seemed to have it all... more»
Mutual Assured Destruction worked fine in the Cold War, but won’t work against jihadis bent on massive death. For them, MAD is an inducement, says Bernard Lewis... more»
Works set down late in a writer’s life fascinate John Updike. These books come from a place where life edges into death. They may have something uncanny to tell us... more»
The official poverty rate doesn’t give us what it was devised for: a constant level of absolute material deprivation in American society. Nicholas Eberstadt explains why... more»
What does Lebanon want? To be Hanoi, circa 1970, or Hong Kong today? To struggle against Israel, or be a place of freedom and wealth?... more» ... What Hezbollah wants ... while farther afield.
“It is painful to consider,” wrote Samuel Johnson about friendship, “that there is no human possession of which the duration is less certain”... more»
Talking about masturbation is under a powerful “taboo”: so goes the self-serving myth peddled by solo-sex crusaders who are always too willing to discuss their obsession... more»
In the 1970s there was a fad for giving dolls to baby boys and toy trucks to baby girls. Change the culture and we’d change how the sexes saw their worlds. It didn’t work... more»
In science, confusion is essential to progress. An unwillingness to feel lost, in fact, can stop creativity dead. Now if you’re a science reporter, try telling that to your editor... more»
“There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection,” Charles Darwin wrote, “than in the course which the wind blows”... more»
Scientists need their analogies to describe reality. But what makes an analogy useful or misleading? If, say, the universe is an expanding balloon, when will it pop?... more»
Big Pharma ignores the drugs that matter, wastes huge amounts of money corrupting the market, and passes on the cost to patients. At least, that’s how the story goes... more»
Gavrilo Princip went to his death happy, knowing that by shooting the Archduke he had involved the world in a war to free his Slav brothers. Compare him to Yasser Arafat... more»
The collapse of the Doha Round is a matter of evil and idiocy, a case of outrageous incompetence, so bad that it verges on criminality... more» ... more»
Dying in ulcerated agony, Tom Paine was imposed upon by two men of the cloth who forced themselves into his house and urged him to accept Jesus to avoid hell... more»
Our Pleistocene brain always tries to find meaning in random patterns, but it is not very good at spotting true causal connections. Folk science often misleads us... more»
“I’m just the composer, I don’t have any answers,” Mozart seems to be saying at the end of Don Giovanni. “Life goes on!” And so it does: with Mozart, forever... more»
Our identity is something we discover within ourselves, goes one view. Amartya Sen will have none of it: our identities are plural and are largely chosen by us... more»
Airbus is in free fall while Boeing rises. Can we draw lessons from the fate of these companies? Maybe not: it might be that luck has more to do with it than we want to know... more»
Desperate grandmas: They’re busy, busy, busy! They go to the gym! They work in animal shelters! They travel! They get divorced! And yes (Yes! Yes!), they have orgasms!... more»
Who would you bring back to the post-9/11 world, Shakespeare or Shaw? Michael Holroyd wants Shaw, who “exercised his right to be unpopular in time of war”... more»
Late in life, Darwin was a celebrity: his portrait in magazines, autographs, sightseers going to his home, his study an inner sanctum where great thought had taken place... more»
“The violence done to Lebanon shall overwhelm you” (Habakkuk 2:17). Clearly, it is Lebanon that is having violence done to it. But who shall be overwhelmed? Israel? Hezbollah?... more»
There was something like a Trojan war, maybe several Trojan wars. It would be fine to know the truth about them, but who would give up the Iliad for the historical record?... more»
“Over here, you’re the commodity; you’re the piece of meat. I’ve lived in St. Petersburg for two years, and I wouldn’t date an American woman now if you paid me!”... more»
America’s Wild West was won, but Canada’s Mild West was negotiated. One was all sheriffs, outlaws, and the O.K. Corral. The other was peace, order, and Mounties... more»
Philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, one of Iran’s preeminent thinkers, is in Tehran’s Evin prison, where he has for two months been in solitary confinement... more» ... more»
Once upon a time, ads challenged readers’ “cultural competencies.” Too hard. No more double entendres. The single is quite enough. Ryan Bigge explains... more»
“If you had the chance, would you do it all over again and be an English professor?” The student wanted to know: can you still love literature after the fog of theory?... more»
Zidane’s head butt might have been a moment of madness. But l’affaire Zidane, the storm of reactions, seems even crazier, says Mick Hume... more» ... more»
North Korean art must express no uncertainty, individual hopes, or mystery. “If the people who see a picture cannot grasp its meaning,” says Kim Jong-il... more»
An angry John Kennedy stood next to the Berlin Wall in 1963 and declaimed, Ich bin ein Berliner – but later wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake... more»
Confirmation bias: science has all sorts of self-correcting machinery to guard against the human will to believe in our most cherished ideas. But beyond science... more»
Take childhood obesity. Do parents bear any blame for it? Of course not. Blame government, along with snack producers and their hucksters. But parents? Never... more»
Marx’s Das Kapital is a work of economics. But, argues Francis Wheen, it can be read as a Gothic novel, a Victorian melodrama, a Greek tragedy, or a Swiftian satire... more»
Gushing admiration was what she had come to expect when she toured minor-league colleges, allowing them to bask in her dazzling presence. She was, after all, Susan Sontag... more»
Why does pop culture portray primitive peoples as peace-loving folk living in harmony with nature, when the facts show that they are mostly nasty, brutish and short?... more»
Milk chocolate was once thought to be good for stomach ailments. Maybe it wasn’t, but it certainly did a lot for the British Museum... more»
We all thought we knew that by moving tropical waters to the North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream keeps Europe so warm for its latitude. Now another myth bites the dust... more»
Conservatives are unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it: they expand it while they disavow it. So we get bigger, more incompetent government... more»
With a fusion reactor, a small amount of fuel can supply power for a city of a million people for a year, with only paltry amounts of radioactive waste... more»
As Jefferson wrote, “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them, by the grace of God”... more»
It turns out the green doom mongers and warriors on terror have a lot in common. Follow their orders, or we all die. The threats are global, and all connected, you see... more»
David Irving should be free. So long as he sits in prison, Europeans who criticize Islamic “intolerance” look like hypocrites, says Peter Singer... more»
Which sex is more generous, men or women? You can ask a woman. Or a beggar, or a sociologist, or a waiter. Each of the sexes has different ways of proving itself generous... more»
Skeptics should not focus only on superstition, pseudoscience, and the supernatural. The ultimate skeptical challenge is not weird things but insidiously mundane ones... more»
Hawking, we have a problem. Surely the great physicist could have made a better case for space travel than to argue that human beings face catastrophe on Earth... more»
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Diet Book. Who would have thought this treasure even existed? Not Woody Allen, until on a visit to Heidelberg he made an unexpected find... more»
Stravinsky’s music, deaf to the world around it, meant to express nothing, has turned out to be the most exact echo of the terrifying years that brought it into being... more»
Nature is staggeringly cruel, while science has the power of mercy. If genetics gives us ways to play God over diseases that cause incalculable human suffering, then so be it... more»
For the Founding Fathers, the view ran: “no republic without liberty, no liberty without virtue, and no virtue without religion.” It was an argument John Witherspoon endorsed... more»
There is no intellectual privacy with blogs: all talk is public, with the arrogant, the ignorant, and the bullheaded drowning out the saintly, or even merely well informed... more»
Not long ago, many thought that South Africa’s attempt to build a truly non-racial, modern society was the best gift Africa had ever given to the world... more»
Randall Balmer is not a traitor to the faith. He is as much an evangelical as his critics. Still, he refuses to believe that Jesus is a Republican... more»
“IQ magnets”: they are a few cities scattered over the globe that attract the brightest and most creative people. Can their monopoly be broken? Should it be?... more» ... more»
Democratic liberals grouse that the media help the GOP by buying into the right’s chosen vocabulary. It’s a valid point... more»
Bill Buford gave up his job at the New Yorker for life as a kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice butcher in Tuscany... more»
Berlin Childhood Around 1900 is a memorial to a world the Nazis destroyed, written by a man they hounded to death: Walter Benjamin... more»
“I dream,” says Erica Jong, “that I have written an amazing book.” What’s amazing is the mediocrity and tedium of her newest work... more»
Richard Hofstadter knew full well how fragile liberalism is, even if he sometimes mistook its prejudices for principles and its illusions for ideals... more»
The gods punished Athens for the atrocity of Melos by making the Athenians listen to the siren song of Alcibiades... more»
Histories of the New World begin usually in 1492. How fresh to look at the Americas as they existed in the fateful year of 1491... more»
Takeru Kobayashi is a medical mystery. He’s a skinny little guy who can eat 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes. A champion of competitive eating... more»
A country’s wealth and its growth rate are not icing on the cake of a happy, virtuous society. They are the factors that make it possible... more»
Rum was originally a rather vile by-product of the 17th-century sugar industry. The name is from rumbustion – tumult or uproar... more»
Cities are fun, but they can be rather dangerous. It is not nature that is out to get us, but our fellow human beings. Consider Paris... more»
There is no rush of air past the ears in a balloon, since it moves with the wind. Alas, balloonists often forget who is in charge until it is too late... more»
In Australia, it has long been taken for granted that the oldest art is Aboriginal. The Bradshaw paintings challenge this idea... more» ... images
Upton Sinclair was a man of a distinctly American stripe: the activist dreamer with a deep messianic streak... more»
Joe McCarthy’s demagoguery has been used to argue the innocence of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. He was awful, but they still were traitors... more»
When Igor Stravinsky died, the world was without a great composer for the first time in six hundred years. It still is... more»
People opt for vegetarianism for the same reasons now as 2,000 years ago: it is good for their health and they don’t like killing animals... more»
The Prophet Muhammad used the name of Allah to mask his political aims with a religious aura and so justify conquest, writes Efraim Karsh... more»
The garden is the point where nature and human nature meet to make a whole that is natural and artificial, intelligent and inanimate, all at once... more»
The Germans were caught off-guard by British high-tech weaponry at the Somme. This was not the army of amateurs they had expected... more»
To Kill a Mockingbird sold 30 million copies but Harper Lee never published another book. Was she a great writer or a so-so writer with great editors?... more»
Martha Gellhorn’s letters are as striking as her journalism, more engaging than her fiction, and full of the energy. But as for their reliability... more»
Enter the hollow earth at the poles and we might discover a new civilization. Unless we already live in a hollow earth. Umberto Eco explains... more»
For all the cash black athletes have put into the pockets of white club owners, they have not been able to control their own destinies... more»
Tourism turns the planet into a uniform spectacle where we wander through an imitation of an imitation of a place we once wanted to visit... more»
Hugh Trevor-Roper, scourge of mediocre Oxford dons, was a profound analyst and fine stylist. His irony-drenched letters... more»
Hergé’s vast human tableau is worthy of Balzac, managed as subtly as Jane Austen or Henry James. Tintin is the key to modern literature... more»
For Richard Lanham, artists are the ultimate “economists of attention,” the real experts in grabbing their chunk of our mind-share... more» ... more»
Catharine MacKinnon is seen as some kind of fierce amazon toward men. She may be fierce, but only with regard to abuse and hypocrisy... more»
Leo Strauss knew perfectly well the glories of democratic modernity, of equality and liberty, that shaped America... more» ... more»
Yes, Iran today is also a kind of Absurdistan, though the humor of the term should not mask the tragic elements of life in that distressed land... more»
To judge from their paintings, the impressionists led idyllic lives – seaside holidays, sun-dappled gardens, ballerinas. But in truth... more»
The word bourgeois, which names the human being who creates and is created by capitalism, is overdue for a rehabilitation... more»
Adam Smith’s secret was to be an idealist without taking that impertinent and annoying next step of being a visionary... more»
Celebrity journalism has all to do with celebrity and nothing to do with journalism. Rolling Stone writers are tiny cogs in the star machine... more»
Hunt down your own meat and gather the rest of your meal (a Paleolithic ideal). Failing that, buy from a small-scale farmer (a pastoral ideal)... more»
Many Kentucky Derby riders from 1875 on were black. Most notable among them was the illustrious Jimmy Winkfield... more»
Such pretty little books in their red and green: they’re not flashy, though they do sing – sotto voce – their authority. The Loeb Classical Library... more»
For Rod Dreher, the tragic flaw of our economics is that it is based on greed and envy. He wants a new, crunchy view of life... more»
William Shockley shared the Nobel Prize for his role in the development of the transistor. But that was never enough. In fact, nothing was... more»
Rebecca Goldstein’s teacher at her Orthodox girls school in NYC called Spinoza the “first modern Jew.” It was not meant as a compliment... more»
Don’t look for love, even when you do the right thing, and don’t expect gratitude, ever. It’s lonely being the world’s only Überpower... more»
Greed and covetousness were once seen as sinful; now they are extolled. Look at Jack Welch grin manically from the cover of his new book... more»
Richard Hofstadter tackled big ideas – God, morality, politics, patriotism – because for him big ideas moved American history... more»
Evolution can explain why the peacock’s tail has a procreative advantage. But what is the advantage conferred by the Pyramid of Cheops?... more»
Friendship. There is no doubt that Joseph Epstein – witty, ironic, lively, eloquent – is in favor of it. Up to a point... more»
There’s no shortage of former nannies keen to spill the beans on their rich, famous employers. If you’re Michael and Judy Ovitz.. more»
Lytton Strachey only dealt with sanctimony and hypocrisy in his Victorians. That is why he ignored the amazing Benjamin Disraeli... more»
Sex collectors: they may well be “a literate, articulate, and well-read bunch,” but they are obsessed by passions most of us won’t understand... more»
Slavery, a resilient, flexible, and even efficient way to get work done, made lots of money for owners. No wonder it was hard to abolish... more»
Anna Akhmatova: an exotic moth who could never resist the flame of love. Her unhappy romances made some great poetry... more» ... more»
Emotional blackmail based on guilt is a common theme in fiction. It was pioneered by a writer who deserves a revival: Stefan Zweig... more»
We enjoy novels because we take pleasure in trying to figure out what other people, real or fictional, are thinking and feeling... more»
The West may have been won by good-ol’ American blood and sweat, but the deed was financed largely by perfidious foreign capital... more»
Italy totters along in a state of amiable chaos, its situation desperate but not serious. Italians like it that way... more»
You might expect diaries of the Stalin period to be places where Russians wrote their private torments. Not always so... more»
“Once upon a time” used to be a gateway for children to a land of timeless stories with important lessons. No more... more»
The Story of O presents a tale beyond pornography, showing us something only rarely seen: a vivid picture of one woman’s erotic core... more»
Thomas Young explained how we see, proved Newton wrong, cured the sick, and deciphered the Rosetta Stone. And that’s just for starters... more»
Of the millions who shared the fate of Nina Lugovskaya under Stalin, only a tiny fraction left behind a record of what they went through... more»
Heinrich Böll’s question still haunts Germany today: was May 1945 the defeat of Germany, or its liberation?... more»
Ancient Britons: brutal, naked, ignorant, murderous, ululating slobs for whom the arrival of Romans was a blessing. Or maybe not... more»
Spiritualism: far from giving us anything that looked like wisdom, it offered the most banal advice, supported by parlor tricks... more»
Wild children intrigue and enthrall because they seem to offer a glimpse of the natural man that lies beneath culture’s encrustations... more»
Ann Coulter says liberals have devised a new atheist religion, with sacraments of abortion, feminism, coddling criminals, and sex with dogs!... more»
Before computers, science still needed number-crunchers. It found them in the quick minds of highly talented and under-rewarded women... more»
Jet airplanes are a symbol of modernity but they look vulnerable – ideal targets in a holy war. That’s why jihadis love to fly... more»
Only Jeff Koons will ever know whether he was sincere about what he was doing. Maybe it doesn’t matter. And maybe even he doesn’t know... more»
Spinoza’s dream that we listen to the voice of reason seems quixotic in an era of religious hate. Yet 350 years ago it was even more improbable... more»
Bretton Woods is lovely for the U.S. It can finance trade deficits with impunity and project its military power around the world... more»
About 40,000 dual Canadian passport holders live full-time in Lebanon. They pay no taxes in Canada. Come the bombs, and they want out, at Canadian taxpayer expense... more»
Peyton Place, which exposed the petty, sordid, and urgently erotic hidden life of a small town, appeared fifty years ago... more»
Female brains release oxytocin after a 20-second hug. The embrace also triggers the brain’s trust circuits. Ladies: careful who you hug... more»
“They were the sorriest looking people you ever saw – but they were always willing to work.” Immigrants change a Delaware town... more»
When the boss’s son takes the helm at work, it’s bad news for employees who were vying for the top spot. But is it bad for the company?... more»
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, has died at her home in Austria, age 90... Guardian
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Wikipedia sets us free to chart our own course, also free to get gloriously lost... more». Plus, Wikipedia celebrates 750 years of U.S. democracy!
Self-discipline and willpower are keys to academic success. But they should be used with care. Cordelia Fine explains... more»
People place Samuel Beckett next to Proust and Dante. But reading Beckett can be like watching the Western canon stick its fingers down its throat... more» ... more»
Mali thrives as a free state because Malians, peasants to college profs, believe they have a gift for democracy and its twin, conflict resolution... more»
Rose herds sheep, battles donkeys, and confronts stray dogs who approach her farm. She’s not cute, hardly a pet. But what a dog... more» ... audio
You’ve tried Craigslist and Club Med, and every date is a dead end. Maybe it’s time to turn to the best matchmakers of all: mom and dad... more»
Fish have a reputation for being cold-blooded, dim-witted creatures. Can they feel pain? Fear? Indeed, are they fully conscious?... more»
There are but four Shakers left on earth, and unless the church can attract some new converts, it is headed for oblivion... more»
As you gaze at the clear blue sky, you behold evidence that atoms really exist. As for its being blue, and not violet... more»
José Raúl Capablanca won 168 chess games in a row. How did he manage the feat? “I see only one move ahead,” he said “but it is always the correct one”... more»
Research on religion is too often done by biased insiders. Catholic scholarship has had this problem, and it afflicts Mormon research today... more»
Yevgeny Zamyatin’s vision of a controlled society, where citizens eat, sleep, work, and love by the clock, had an impact on Orwell... more» ... more»
Happiness is a desirable state. But anyone who maintained constant happiness, given the state of the world, would be living in a delusion... more»
Between his wives, his Wall Street losses, his children, and his mistresses, no one can say Albert Einstein led a simple life... more»
Moscow is the city with the most energetic club scene in the world. For the strong, it can make a great career. The weak are destroyed... more»
Celebrity cookbooks. Who needs them? Cooking is a matter of skill, taste, and experience, not of personality... more»
Shostakovich’s satirical work, “The Anti-Formalist Gallery,” is sung by Stalin in Georgian accent, from speeches of the 1948 Party Congress... more»
Mickey Spillane, a writer of lurid, violent fiction who said with pleasure, “I have no fans, only customers,” is dead at 88... NYT ... LAT ... WP
“Thou canst not stir a flower / Without troubling of a star.” Economists see the point. Politicians uproot flowers, oblivious to celestial chaos... more»
Physicists are not just smart, they bravely save the world, and generously do their research for humanity. If you believe Hollywood... more»
Cortés murdered and enslaved the Aztecs. It was cocolitzli, however, a native virus, that finished them off... more»
Dream interpretation is an old Arab tradition. As a TV formula, it is thus ready made for Arab networks... more»
Shelley’s Poetical Essay was a pamphlet published by the young poet in 1811. It had quite disappeared from history. Until now... more» ... more»
The internationalist intellectual has a calling, Fred Halliday insists: to support human rights, yes, but also to promote informed debate... more»
On July 12, 1906, the highest court in France annulled the verdict on Alfred Dreyfus. His ghost still haunts halls of justice across the globe... more»
Want to buy a fake vacation, medical degree or “Siberian purebred” alley cat? In Moscow, anything’s possible, as long as you don’t care if it’s real... more»
Brava Italia! And it’s not just on the sporting field that the Italians excel. We can learn a thing or two from them about how to live... more»
Is immigration still the great engine of prosperity? Or is it destroying the poorest native workers? Economists do not agree... more»
An 1840 daguerreotype of Mozart’s widow, Constanze, has been found in Germany... more» Unless the lady is just somebody’s aunty.
It’s twilight of the media moguls out here on the web. “Not!” says Rupert Murdoch, media T. rex himself. He has plans... more»
Modigliani’s aim was nothing less than an attempt to reinvent portraiture. Where Picasso and Gris shattered form, he kept it whole... more»
“The most optimistic country in the world.” India’s street peddlers pack cellphones and its middle class is bigger than the whole of the U.S... more»
Philip Rieff, a shrewd, gloomy, deep thinker on topics cultural, is dead at 83... NYT ... LAT ... Phil Inquirer ... Boston Globe ... earlier: Chron Higher Ed
The unlikely rehabilitation of Pearl Buck. Once a non-person in Communist China, the Party has done a bit of a reversal on her... more»
When John Adams said that the “great anniversary festival” of July 4th would be celebrated forever, he ... but wait a minute, he was talking about July 2nd... more»
With piercing blue eyes, a gaunt face scored by lines of laughter and loss, Samuel Beckett not only looked the part, he got the part... more»
Who’d prefer that Little Nell or Emma Bovary had lived? Who wants a retired Harry Potter, bald and grizzled, pint in hand, prattling on?... more»
The Chinese Communist Party has bought off the intelligensia with power and perks. The interests of workers and peasants are ignored... more»
Every year, foods are recalled from U.S. markets due to all-natural insect parts, toxic molds, bacteria, and viruses. So genetic engineering... more»
They play and replay footage of the disaster, looking for clues. They feel sure the post-9/11 era is built on a lie. They are professors of paranoia... more»
For Simon Schama, history is the continuous interwoven drama of human lives, and its study “a resistance against oblivion, against loss”... more»
Once you could say that a McDonald’s in Paris or Taipei was for homesick Yanks. Now the customers come from all over the world. Why?... more»
India’s greatness lies in its self-reliant and resilient people. They deserve government on a par with their vital, growing private sector... more»
In May 2005, crosswords were at the top of the games books bestseller lists. One year later, and Sudoku had wiped the slate clean... more»
Britney: if you’re going to do NBC, take those big wads of chewing gum out of your mouth before the interview. And those clothes... more»
Why did George Bush get a whip, a sniper rifle, and a survivalist handbook? What will Don Rumsfeld do with the aromatherapy set?... more»
Do we give up on the age-old attempt to balance ability with opportunity, and equality with efficiency? How do we connect talent with reward?... more»
Very old masters. A human face drawn 27,000 years ago in an oddly Modigliani style has been found in a cave in France... more»
“As they move forward, the Chinese working classes may also look backward in order again to find their own path to a new socialist society”... more»
Garrison Keillor: How has a man who is so inoffensive managed in his “folksy” way to become so divisive? (Clue: note the scare quotes)... more»
Will postmodernists and humanists ever be friends? Sit down, smoke the pipe of peace, enjoy a few drinks together? No, never! Mark Goldblatt explains... more»
Western, rational culture gave the world the talking cure, with Freud telling us wha | |
