Books & the Arts

Don’t Criticize Me Don’t Criticize Me

Karl Rove and his Singing Slimemeisters riff You Go To My Head.

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Calvin Trillin

President Thelma President Thelma

Is Commander-in-Chief softening up the country for President Hillary? Americans may not not be ready to put a woman in the White House, but they may have calmed down enough to cont...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Richard Goldstein

In Kars and Frankfurt In Kars and Frankfurt

The winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature wrote this 2005 editorial in The Nation, addressing the issue of the artistic imagination at risk in a repressive state.

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Orhan Pamuk

Agee’s Gospel Agee’s Gospel

Two new volumes in the Library of America series present the life and work of James Agee, whose flashes of greatness as an essayist, screenwriter, novelist and Nation film reviewe...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Phillip Lopate

Soul on Ice Soul on Ice

Is jazz really dead--or has it simply moved to a cooler location? Four new books take a scholarly look at a musical genre that is on the wane in America, but finding new life and n...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / David Yaffe

The Scrivener and the Whale The Scrivener and the Whale

Andrew Delbanco's new biography of Herman Melville reveals that the great writer came to realize that what torments men is not the longing to believe that there is meaning in the u...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick

I Act, Therefore I Am I Act, Therefore I Am

Admired from a distance and reviled up close, Laurence Olivier could establish a relation with his audience that was like an infection. His official biography chronicles a personal...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / David Thomson

Monster’s Ball Monster’s Ball

Party in the Blitz, the final volume of Nobel laureate Elias Canetti's memoirs, is a chaotic, horribly fascinating memoir of a man who was a slave to love, an omnivorous intellect ...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / John Banville

The Ring Cycle The Ring Cycle

When Joe Louis defeated Nazi sympathizer Max Schmeling in 1938, it was the boxing match that reverberated across the world. Three new books chronicle the match and all the racial a...

Nov 16, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Gerald Early

From Beirut to Damascus From Beirut to Damascus

Four works trace the intertwined history of Lebanon and Syria and the interplay of political radicalism, military strength and miseries of war and murderous political intrigue.

Nov 10, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Charles Glass

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