Books & the Arts

What Are They Reading? What Are They Reading?

There's no better antidote to orange alerts and duct-tape dictums than good fiction, and if the terrorists occupying the White House have shot your attention span, try a book of ...

Mar 25, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Judith Long

An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy An American Tragedy

The tragedy of America in the post-cold war era is that we have proved unequal to the responsibility that our own power placed upon us.

Mar 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Schell

Germline Warfare Germline Warfare

A most remarkable event occurred in the weeks preceding the June 2000 announcement of the completion of the first draft of the human genome DNA code: One of the leaders of the ...

Mar 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Ralph Brave

Against the Genetic Grain Against the Genetic Grain

I first heard of Jon Beckwith in the mid-1970s, in a question framed by my genetics professor: Why would anyone willfully disrupt a research program designed to collect useful ...

Mar 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Marks

Reading Leonardo Reading Leonardo

In 1906, the French savant Pierre Duhem published a three-volume work on Leonardo as scientist under the innocuous title Études sur Leonard de Vinci. It was the work's s...

Mar 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto

‘For the Monkey’ ‘For the Monkey’

When James Agee wrote in these pages sixty years ago, he often complained of the paltriness of this or that movie, as judged against the events of the day.

Mar 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Around the World in 80 Ways Around the World in 80 Ways

In about five years' time, there will be a new Paul Theroux travel book, and it will look like this.

Mar 13, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Eric Weinberger

Military Globalism Military Globalism

One of the first casualties of war may be those happy-talk forecasts of a robust recovery once the bombing starts in Iraq, but a far more momentous economic question accompanie...

Mar 13, 2003 / Books & the Arts / William Greider

War and Remembrance War and Remembrance

In a provocative book published recently in Germany, a Hamburg scholar named Klaus Briegleb appeared to take on the entire national literary establishment for indulging in self...

Mar 13, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Hugh Eakin

Guns in the Courtroom Guns in the Courtroom

In the late summer and fall of 1997, small news leaks began appearing that Mayor Edward Rendell of Philadelphia (who is now governor of Pennsylvania) was thinking about suing t...

Mar 13, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Carl T. Bogus

x