Nick Turse: The United States Hasn’t Owned up to Vietnam War Crimes Nick Turse: The United States Hasn’t Owned up to Vietnam War Crimes
The author recounts his long, difficult struggle to expose the truth about atrocities.
Feb 11, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Press Room
Nothing New Under the Wingnut Sun: ‘Textbook Wars’ Nothing New Under the Wingnut Sun: ‘Textbook Wars’
When conservatives challenge curricula like they did last week in Fairfax County, Virginia, they reveal fundamental tensions in liberal education that aren’t going away.
Feb 11, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Rick Perlstein
Torture and Taboo: On Elaine Scarry Torture and Taboo: On Elaine Scarry
How the work of a literary critic became the proxy for our preoccupation with the horrors of torture.
Feb 5, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn
Making Strange: On Victor Shklovsky Making Strange: On Victor Shklovsky
A Russian novelist’s fight, in life and art, to see the world afresh in all its cruelty and splendor.
Feb 5, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Ben Ehrenreich
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger’s Jews and Words.
Feb 5, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Laura Brahm
‘Zero Dark Thirty’, Snuff Film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, Snuff Film
The film’s torture scenes do not excuse or glorify torture; they do something worse: draw the audience into accommodating it.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / JoAnn Wypijewski
Nick Turse: The US Military Regularly Killed Civilians in Vietnam Nick Turse: The US Military Regularly Killed Civilians in Vietnam
A new book shows that incidents like the My Lai massacre were part of the widescale killing of non-combatants.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Press Room
Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld
In his writing and life, Thomas Bernhard led a charge in the opposite direction. His publisher always broke his fall.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Holly Case
Instructions From Lazarus Instructions From Lazarus
Having risen from the bed, after the ability to stand had been re-established, the gait still adjusting to the shifts of the body’s weight, I found myself in front of the streaked mirror in the hospital room. The halo was dull in that light, almost brushed in appearance. How saintly of me to wear a halo? I wanted a narrator to say: Here, he models the latest headwear, the finest in German engineering. But James Earl Jones was apparently unavailable. The pins buried in my skull looked like a nautical device of some kind. But there were no journeys for me to take, just a bed and a room. My nurse’s name was Zar, short for Lazarus. Of course his name was Lazarus. It fits with the theme of this whole thing. Zar said take it easy, said move slowly and think about each step as if you are learning to walk. But one doesn’t think about each step when learning to walk. We rise, we fumble, we shuffle, we fall. The wings, buried (thankfully) were just an itch between my shoulder blades, a slight tug on the muscles depending on the way I moved. Each night I prayed to make it out of the hospital before the wings made themselves known again.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / C. Dale Young
Diagram This: On Adrienne Rich Diagram This: On Adrienne Rich
A new collection of Adrienne Rich’s poems does not show her at her best.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko