Books and Ideas

Crowds and Power Crowds and Power

In Death in the Haymarket James Green uses the story of the Haymarket riot to expose the hopes and fears of nineteenth-century America, a nation living on the knife-edge of social ...

Mar 16, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Steve Fraser

Will Greenspan Tell the Truth? Will Greenspan Tell the Truth?

A Greenspan memoir will do fine in the marketplace. It is the kind of Important Book daughters buy for father's birthday. In the unlikely event Greenspan tells the truth, it would ...

Mar 8, 2006 / Books & the Arts / William Greider

Life Is Sweet Life Is Sweet

Federico Fellini: His Life And Work effaces nearly everything written about the great Italian director, offering a distinct critical analysis and an absorbing account of his privat...

Mar 2, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Peter Cowie

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

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

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

Emotional Truth Emotional Truth

In a DNA-driven search for biological roots, it behooves us to be less romantic about connecting with our ancestors. If we biologize our history, we will be forever less than we co...

Feb 16, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Patricia J. Williams

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