Afterimages Afterimages
A hundred ways of looking at Che Guevara.
Jun 10, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Maurice Isserman
An Empire of Vice An Empire of Vice
Several new histories trace Cuba's exotic and reviled place in the American political imagination.
Jun 10, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
On a Monday On a Monday
On a Monday eternity finally begins and the day that follows is scarcely named, and the other is the dark, the done. On that day are extinguished all whispers and the face we loved dissolves in mist-- hope becomes hopeless: no one is coming. Eternity knows nothing of our habits, indifferent to red and the softest blue, it prefers gray, smoke, ashes. You scratch a name and a date on a piece of marble and it rubs them out with a careless shoulder, not even a pinch of bitterness left behind. Yet see, I cling to Mondays and I give the next your name; in total darkness I write with the tip of my cigarette: here have I lived. (Translated from the Spanish by Mark Weiss)
Jun 10, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Eliseo Diego
Orchids and Lilacs: Darwin, Lincoln and Slavery Orchids and Lilacs: Darwin, Lincoln and Slavery
What are the intellectual costs of recasting Lincoln and Darwin into heroes for our troubled times?
Jun 3, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Nicholas Guyatt
Back Talk: Graham Parker Back Talk: Graham Parker
A conversation with the author of Fair Use: Notes From Spam about spam, scambaiters and language games.
Jun 3, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Christine Smallwood
Off Camera: Civil Rights in the North Off Camera: Civil Rights in the North
Sweet Land of Liberty is a bold, if decidedly underdramatic, rewriting of civil rights history.
Jun 3, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Scott Saul
Inquisitions Inquisitions
From Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, tales of the Devil and wise women, torturers and the tortured.
Jun 3, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Eduardo Galeano
The Age of Paine The Age of Paine
It was Tom Paine, ink-stained wretch and citizen of the world, who first roused American patriots to action.
Jun 3, 2009 / Books & the Arts / John Nichols
Women’s Poetry Women’s Poetry
I, too, dislike it. However, I was trying to not think when out of the gaping wound of the car-detailing garage (smells like metallic sex) came a Nissan GT-R fitted with an oversized spoiler. Backing out sounded like clearing the throat of god. A gold snake zizzed around the license plate. Sunburst hubcaps, fancy undercarriage installation casting a pool of violet light on the pocked pavement of gum blots. Was it this that filled me with desire?
Jun 3, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Daisy Fried
Return of the Fabulous Return of the Fabulous
In the end, the vote was silly or sad, but for eighteen weeks on American Idol, Adam Lambert was Everyman and Everygayman, skating the edge of ecstasy and terror.
May 27, 2009 / Books & the Arts / JoAnn Wypijewski