A History of Violence A History of Violence
Munich is a first-rate spy thriller featuring an assassin who reveals his soul. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain gives two extraordinary actors time and space to develop a rare emotion...
Dec 20, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Out of Place Out of Place
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, portraits of the Moroccan immigrants in Spain, gracefully evokes the unease of immigrants caught adrift between the stagnation of their old homes...
Dec 20, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Emily Lodish
Wartime Lies Wartime Lies
As Nazis dropped bombs in Warsaw, poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote a collection of literary criticism that sought to trace the rise of totalitarianism by deconstructing the mythologies of...
Dec 20, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Timothy Snyder
Europa, Europa Europa, Europa
Tony Judt's Postwar, a massive summary of European public life since World War II, is a triumph of narrative that will allow readers familiar with the history to experience it agai...
Dec 20, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Charles S. Maier
Rembrandt’s Year Rembrandt’s Year
2006 marks Rembrandt's 400th birthday, and an array of exhibitions, from the sublime to the silly, will open in Amsterdam, Washington and beyond. As the aesthetic hype escalate...
Dec 19, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Abigail R. Esman
East Fifth Street: A Poster for the Oresteia East Fifth Street: A Poster for the Oresteia
Pasted bumpily on brick, life-sized. Inside, in a former foundry's casting vault, my father in the role of Agamemnon died. A thin-browed bronze mask skating
Dec 15, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Anne Winters
The Displaced of Capital The Displaced of Capital
"A shift in the structure of experience..." As I pass down Broadway this misty late-winter morning, the city is ever alluring, but thousands of miles to the south
Dec 15, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Anne Winters
MacDougal Street: Old-Law Tenements MacDougal Street: Old-Law Tenements
We're aware in every nerve end of our tenement's hand-mortared Jersey brick, the plumbing's dripping dew-points, the electric running Direct, and on each landing four hall-johns fitted to the specifics and minima of the 1879 Tenement Housing Act. We lived in its clauses and parentheses, that drew up steep stairways and filled the brown airwells with eyebrowed windows. Unwhistling, the midwinter radiator lists in its pool of rust. A lightcord winds through its light chain; from a plasterless ceiling-slat topples a roach, with its shadow. Downstairs, our Sicilian widow beats the cold ribs with a long-handled skillet, and faucets drum in twenty old-law flats.
Dec 15, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Anne Winters
2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize 2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Anne Winters's The Displaced of Capital, winner of the 2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, is a reflective, documentary and visionary volume of poetry inspired by the city of New Yo...
Dec 15, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Robert Pinsky
Farewell to the Working Class Farewell to the Working Class
Two new books on indolence, How To Be Idle and Bonjour Laziness, issue low-energy cries for political apathy, a shorter work week and the fine art of slacking off.
Dec 15, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Austin Kelley