Books and Ideas

About Henry About Henry

Henry James is not a name that springs to mind when we think of adventure stories, prose epics or historical fiction.

Oct 14, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Brenda Wineapple

Learning to Love the Bomb Learning to Love the Bomb

While I saw Edward Teller at several scientific conferences and heard him lecture, I met him only once. It left an indelible memory. It was at the end of April 1954.

Oct 14, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Jeremy Bernstein

Dissent at 50 Dissent at 50

In the summer of 1953, the New School for Social Research hung a yellow curtain over a mural by the Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco. Orozco's transgression?

Oct 14, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Scott Sherman

Picking Up the Pieces Picking Up the Pieces

Brian Wilson began recording his masterpiece, Smile, in 1966; the project collapsed a year later, unfinished.

Oct 7, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Douglas Wolk

Office Politics Office Politics

As one of those pathetic evolutionary throwbacks who has never used e-mail or the Internet, and has hardly ever handled a mobile phone, I can approach this book with all the supr...

Oct 7, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Terry Eagleton

Rhythm Nation Rhythm Nation

Since Fidel Castro's brief fainting spell during a speech in June 2001, Miami, Havana and Washington have been caldrons of feverish speculation on his succession and the politics...

Oct 7, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Ann Louise Bardach

Liberal Hawk Down Liberal Hawk Down

This essay is adapted from Anatol Lieven's next book, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, to be published this month by Oxford University Press.

Oct 7, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Anatol Lieven

When Presidents Lie When Presidents Lie

Official dishonesty is never worthwhile.

Oct 7, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman

‘There Are No Innocents’ ‘There Are No Innocents’

An oppressive and beleaguered empire, a terrorist international, a storm raging in the world press about torture, right-wing Christians on the march against moral decline and the...

Oct 7, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Alexander Cockburn

This Canadian Life This Canadian Life

The reviewer's galley of Natasha, David Bezmozgis's short-story collection about a Russian émigré family in Toronto, begins with words not from the writer but the p...

Sep 30, 2004 / Books & the Arts / D.T. Max

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