Books and Ideas

By Any Means Necessary By Any Means Necessary

In June 1965 James Farmer, leader of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and longtime champion of Gandhian nonviolence, arrived in Bogalusa, Louisiana, to support a desegregat...

Jun 17, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Mike Marqusee

Scenes From a Marriage Scenes From a Marriage

Conventional wisdom suggests Israelis and Palestinians are bitter enemies: two sides mired in a century-long conflict marked by violence, hatred and an unbounded reservoir of bru...

Jun 17, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Shainin

Bourgeois Dystopias Bourgeois Dystopias

The suburbs don't feel suburban anymore.

Jun 10, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Eric Klinenberg

Le Gai Savoir Le Gai Savoir

"Paris is a very old story," Henry James wrote in 1878--so old, in fact, that it's hard to write about it without falling into clichés about chestnut trees, couture, freed...

Jun 10, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Brenda Wineapple

Ugly Beauty Ugly Beauty

In the fall of 1958, the second book by a young British poet named Philip Larkin made it across the ocean and into the consciousness of American poetry.

Jun 10, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Melanie Rehak

On Native Ground On Native Ground

I've long considered E.L. Doctorow the most American of contemporary writers--in a particularly classic sense.

Jun 10, 2004 / Books & the Arts / David L. Ulin

There He Goes Again There He Goes Again

Near the end of his threadbare, tendentious and dubious hagiography of Ronald Reagan, Peter Schweizer recounts the President's first trip to Moscow, in late spring 1988.

Jun 8, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Walter C. Uhler

Not Necessarily the First Lady Not Necessarily the First Lady

Nancy and Ronald Reagan met, they have repeatedly said, when she was blacklisted by mistake in the early 1950s after having been confused with another actress who had the same na...

Jun 7, 2004 / Feature / Jon Wiener

Don’t Worry, Be Happy Don’t Worry, Be Happy

David Brooks is a writer whose chief claim to fame is not what he says but where he says it.

Jun 3, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Nicholas von Hoffman

The Irresistible Rise of Berlusconi The Irresistible Rise of Berlusconi

Dressed up as a tropical dictator in a sketch by the great Italian political cartoonist Altan, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wears a double-breasted camouflage jacket, a goony...

Jun 3, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Frederika Randall

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