Books & the Arts

Gandhi and South Africa

Gandhi and South Africa Gandhi and South Africa

Why was Joseph Lelyveld’s history of Gandhi’s years in South Africa attacked by India’s Hindu right?

Oct 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Martha C. Nussbaum

Innocents Lost: On Postwar Orphans

Innocents Lost: On Postwar Orphans Innocents Lost: On Postwar Orphans

Tara Zahra explains why orphaned children held a special grip on Europe’s postwar imagination.

Oct 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Holly Case

Letter From a Prisoner Letter From a Prisoner

You, who only write letters in your dreams Hello mother! your son now engraves in his heart letters to send you he would like to send you a snail loving the ground passionately he would like to print burning kisses everywhere, where your steps take you he would like to send you a snail to read your poems on the sand to gather them in a shell and send them to the sea this sea whose azure you share where she rests Hello mother! Have you received the snail? (translated from the French by Doog T. Wood)

Oct 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Abdallah Zrika

Disciplined Filth

Disciplined Filth Disciplined Filth

George Clooney’s The Ides of March, Danfung Dennis’s Hell and Back Again, Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez’s You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days In...

Oct 11, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

The Wrong Moral Revolution: On Michael Barnett

The Wrong Moral Revolution: On Michael Barnett The Wrong Moral Revolution: On Michael Barnett

To see humanitarianism everywhere is not to see it at all.

Oct 5, 2011 / Books & the Arts / David Rieff

Shelf Life

Shelf Life Shelf Life

Jean-Patrick Manchette’s Fatale, Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place, Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s The History of Costaguana

Oct 5, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Getting to Denmark: On Francis Fukuyama

Getting to Denmark: On Francis Fukuyama Getting to Denmark: On Francis Fukuyama

The Origins of Political Order, a work of total world history, pits the old Fukuyama against the new.

Oct 5, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney

Top Ten Songs About Class Top Ten Songs About Class

Since every great protest movement needs its culture, here's my stab at a list of the ten best songs ever written about class and poverty in tribute to #OccupyWallStreet.

Oct 3, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Peter Rothberg

Cruel America Cruel America

Roars of applause for executions at the GOP debate, official approval of torture, barbaric prison conditions, obstruction of aid to storm victims and children in need—is our ...

Sep 28, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Schell

After Deng: On China’s Transformation

After Deng: On China’s Transformation After Deng: On China’s Transformation

Is Deng Xiaoping’s legacy of modernization without political reform one that no contemporary Chinese official can control?

Sep 27, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Kurlantzick

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