Stories and Legends Stories and Legends
How Barack Obama has fashioned a personal and political identity by treating the history of the civil rights movement as a usable past.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Thomas J. Sugrue
Scoured Light Scoured Light
Nothing is simple in the poems of James Schuyler, not even the formal austerity of looking out a window.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
Talking On Against Time Talking On Against Time
Though a new four-volume compilation of Paris Review interviews is filled with riches, it is tailored to the tastes of a polite literary culture.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Scott Sherman
Talking On Against Time Talking On Against Time
Though a new four-volume compilation of Paris Review interviews is filled with riches, it is tailored to the tastes of a polite literary culture.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Scott Sherman
Hesitation Blues Hesitation Blues
On Elizabeth Cook, Jorma Kaukonen and David Bromberg.
May 13, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman
Aug. 5 Aug. 5
Aug. 5 When a man is asked to sing of his anger the risk is that without remorse virtue dies War then is in the face, in this homelessness, the despair which couldn't wait couldn't ask for We don't talk to each other anymore we email global reach managed minutes morning to noon in the hospitals we are all old forbidden to talk of lost sons, asked to smile Enough, they'll hear the news, men in photographs die and nothing will seem simple, their faces especially where sorrow stretched everything Maps point to? and defeat looms where? out there where? Here the naked body is where terror lies Guilt builds monuments, the way we spend our time
May 12, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Eléna Rivera
In Our Orbit: What Was Lost In Our Orbit: What Was Lost
Kai Bird's Crossing Mandelbaum Gate is a meditation on the collective failure of Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile their histories of loss and victimhood.
May 12, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Frederick Deknatel
The Enhancement of the Senses The Enhancement of the Senses
In The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes lucidly charts how the Romantics were as transfixed by the failures of science as they were by its bright accomplishments.
May 12, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Paula Findlen
Mind the Enlightenment Mind the Enlightenment
Jonathan Israel's epic defense of "Radical Enlightenment" has the dogmatic ring of a profession of faith.
May 12, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn
Job’s Comforters Job’s Comforters
Science can be disproved only by its own criteria; when it comes to mental illness, its own criteria are often insufficient.
May 5, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Adam Phillips