Books & the Arts

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All winter the          leaves stay on this ground   the sun   The rake, the hoe     the furrows   the moon   All winter embodies   The ashes   Working insects beneath

Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joseph Ceravolo

Motives and Apprehensions: On Edward P. Jones Motives and Apprehensions: On Edward P. Jones

Edward P. Jones’s characters know that everything they’ve worked for might suddenly be taken from them.

Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier

Shelf Life Shelf Life

Edward Luttwack’’s The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy

Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Wertheim

Chicken Wire and Telephone Calls: On Robert Caro’s LBJ Chicken Wire and Telephone Calls: On Robert Caro’s LBJ

In The Passage of Power, Robert Caro shows that LBJ’s brilliance as a politician lay not in his idealism but his opportunism.

Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney

Hidden Bird Hidden Bird

Song birds enter the morning the pre-dawn before the fires, you know, when the night floats away like vapor on a lake, or like kisses in the woods. Songs that even creation might not remember.   Continuous, threaded, as if a cherry pit were stuck in the throat to produce the trumpet of the branches. So varies, yet never, changing through all the days, since reptiles fell to earth.   I give up the reason for the sound I give up the creature of sound and the creator of the creatures and of us and of dawn and air and of vacuum and human inhumanity. I give up the song. I give up the place

Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joseph Ceravolo

I’m Nobody, Who Are You? On Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’ I’m Nobody, Who Are You? On Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’

If you get to the top, only to find that the voice hounding you with charges of inauthenticity is your own, what then?

Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Oliver Stone’s ‘Untold History’

Oliver Stone’s ‘Untold History’ Oliver Stone’s ‘Untold History’

Missed opportunities, roads not taken—these are the central themes of Stone's new documentary. 

Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Jon Wiener

The Noble and the Base: Poland and the Holocaust The Noble and the Base: Poland and the Holocaust

Can the two central images of Poland during World War II—a country of heroes and a country of collaborators—ever be combined?

Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / John Connelly

Children of the Storm: Education and Social Mobility Children of the Storm: Education and Social Mobility

Paul Tough and Jonathan Kozol examine how decades of family-unfriendly policies have heightened the stress experienced by many children at home and school.

Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Helen C. Epstein

Generation X: On Wade Guyton and Gerhard Richter Generation X: On Wade Guyton and Gerhard Richter

Why two artists use a printer to make paintings without using paint.

Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky

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