Books & the Arts

Billie Holiday and Mister, circa 1946. (Credit: William P. Gottlieb / LOC)

Who Loves You? Who Loves You?

America’s ongoing fascination with Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra.

Sep 10, 2015 / Books & the Arts / David Hajdu

Diagnosis Inc.

Diagnosis Inc. Diagnosis Inc.

You are two oranges shy of sangria You chumpchange in a clackdish You the flensed soldier, egg-runny on the inside You frogging deadline after deadline You caught in a Swiss chokeh…

Sep 10, 2015 / Books & the Arts / James Byrne

Miriam Toews (credit: Carol Loewen)

The Unfathomable Sadness The Unfathomable Sadness

Miriam Toews writes about death and mental illness without sentimentality or sweeping platitudes.

Sep 10, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Lauren Oyler

Saul Bellow (middle) after acknowledging his receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature, October 22, 1976. (Credit: Charles Knoblock / AP)

The Flow of Life The Flow of Life

Is Saul Bellow the central American novelist since Willa Cather and William Faulkner?

Sep 10, 2015 / Books & the Arts / David Mikics

Top Ten Back-to-School Songs

Top Ten Back-to-School Songs Top Ten Back-to-School Songs

An incomplete list of some of the best songs ever written about school.

Sep 8, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Peter Rothberg

Yoss

Welcome to Earth: Cuba’s ‘Special Period’ Gets the Sci-Fi Treatment Welcome to Earth: Cuba’s ‘Special Period’ Gets the Sci-Fi Treatment

The funny, scathing, and heart-wrenching universe of A Planet for Rent.

Aug 27, 2015 / Books & the Arts / André Naffis-Sahely

Black Panthers on parade at a Free Huey rally in Defermery Park in West Oakland, July 28, 1968.

White Hands and Black Skulls: From the Panthers to ‘Straight Outta Compton’ White Hands and Black Skulls: From the Panthers to ‘Straight Outta Compton’

Two new films prove the urgency, and inadequacy, of outrage.

Aug 27, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Cairo Street Scene, 1934. Credit: Library of Congress

Writings From the Most Fractured Place on Earth Writings From the Most Fractured Place on Earth

The revival of powerful literature about the Levant sheds light on our 21st-century conflicts.

Aug 27, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Adina Hoffman

Daveed Diggs (center) as Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. (Joan Marcus)

How ‘Hamilton’ Is Revolutionizing the Broadway Musical How ‘Hamilton’ Is Revolutionizing the Broadway Musical

The bracing fusion of hip hop and the musical form shows that America’s history—and its future—belong to men and women of color as profoundly as to anyone else.

Aug 27, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Alisa Solomon

Eric Garner protest

The Work of Art in the Age of Spectacular Reproduction The Work of Art in the Age of Spectacular Reproduction

The Internet gives us an unearned relation to the present, and the visual art of JR is perfectly aligned with it.

Aug 13, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Jesse McCarthy

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