The Zionist Imagination The Zionist Imagination
As the founding father of the Zionist right, Vladimir Jabotinsky rejected Diaspora existence. Yet in his 1935 novel The Five he tenderly evoked it, offering a glimpse of something ...
Jun 8, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Jacqueline Rose
P-Funk Politics P-Funk Politics
As hurricane season began in earnest, Ray Nagin, who famously declared New Orleans a "chocolate city," began his second term as mayor. What better time to appreciate the way Georg...
Jun 5, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Ned Sublette
Local Hero Local Hero
Reviews of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, A Prairie Home Companion and The Da Vinci Code.
Jun 1, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Reasonable Cause Reasonable Cause
Imagine cities you've Inhabited, streets Paved in lava stone. You never intended to pray In the temples, had Nothing to sell. Now imagine yourself Returning to those same cities. The river flows, the summit Emerges each morning from the haze. Hunt for people you knew, Knock on their doors. Ask yourself Where are the vases, animals Etched in gold? Where are the wines From distant places, Banquets ferreted From the bowels of the earth? While you were missing Other people wore Your garments, Slept in your bed. How frightening The man who said In his affliction Wood has hope. Cut down It will flourish. If the root grows old And the trunk withers In dust, at the scent of water It will germinate.
Jun 1, 2006 / Books & the Arts / James Longenbach
The Missionary Position The Missionary Position
Like radical Islamists and American interventionists, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's The Caged Virgin and Irshad Manji's The Trouble With Islam Today express great concern for Muslim women. But...
Jun 1, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Laila Lalami
Road to Perdition Road to Perdition
A nearly forgotten criminal conspiracy by GM, Firestone and Chevron shut down the nation's municipal railways, replacing them with gas-guzzling bus lines, paving the way for global...
May 31, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Morton Mintz
Sorel’s People Sorel’s People
In Literary Lives, caricaturist Edward Sorel tells all and then some about giants like Yeats, Proust, Hellman and Jung within the humble frame of a comic strip.
May 26, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Richard Lingeman
Keeping It Real Keeping It Real
In Songs of Experience, Martin Jay examines modern debates over the relationship between theory and the lived world.
May 24, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Jackson Lears
Anatomy of a Murder Anatomy of a Murder
Cynthia Carr's Our Town seeks to uncover hidden truths about a 1930 lynching in small-town Indiana. But Carr fails to break the code of silence that many of the town's inhabitants,...
May 24, 2006 / Books & the Arts / David Bradley
In Theory In Theory
In Frontiers of Justice, philosopher Martha Nussbaum explores our moral obligations to the disabled, to nonhuman animals and to the unresolved areas of international law.
May 18, 2006 / Books & the Arts / John Gray