Pledging Allegiance Pledging Allegiance
Todd Gitlin uses patriotism to wallop the radical left in The Intellectuals and the Flag.
Mar 2, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Lazare
Exile and the Kingdom Exile and the Kingdom
In his newest novel The Last Friend, Tahar Ben Jelloun draws from his experiences as a writer and activist under Morocco's repressive monarchy.
Mar 2, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Laila Lalami
Bad Will Hunting Bad Will Hunting
Two new books on Shakespeare examine his shadowy life, his times and the origins of his imagination. A third explores whether the Bard of Avon was, in fact, Edward de Vere.
Feb 28, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Swift
The March of Progress The March of Progress
A comparative list of how our cultural life has changed in the progression from the modern age to the postmodern.
Feb 26, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Norman Mailer
The Candidate The Candidate
James Carville peddles democracy in Bolivia in Our Brand Is Crisis, and anti-Nazi passions play out in Sophie Scholl: The Last Days.
Feb 23, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Compromising Positions Compromising Positions
Richard Schickel's biography of Elia Kazan is a laudatory postscript to a life marked by social turmoil, political strife and artistic intensity.
Feb 23, 2006 / Books & the Arts / David Bromwich
Alice Walton’s Fig Leaf Alice Walton’s Fig Leaf
Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton is on a buying spree, filling her Arkansas museum with America's cultural treasures--a fig leaf that seeks to cover Wal-Mart's naked greed and exploit...
Feb 21, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Rebecca Solnit
Labor Pains Labor Pains
Robert Fitch's Solidarity for Sale exposes corruption as the cause of the current crisis in American labor.
Feb 16, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Kim Phillips-Fein
The Man Who Heard It All The Man Who Heard It All
Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music reviews the world of Western art music, expressing the magnificence and melancholy of its own age.
Feb 16, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Paul Griffiths
The Palestinian Patient The Palestinian Patient
Gate of the Sun follows the odyssey of Palestinians driven to refugee camps in Lebanon by Israeli forces in 1948.
Feb 16, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Raja Shehadeh