Books and Ideas

Prison Without Walls Prison Without Walls

Our nation's two-decade spree of building prisons and sentencing even nonviolent criminals to long spells inside them has produced a staggering number of incarcerated people in A...

Apr 8, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Egan

Empty Vessel Empty Vessel

For a man who destroyed his country and wrecked or stole hundreds of thousands of lives, Slobodan Milosevic is an oddly colorless villain.

Apr 1, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Laura Secor

Everybody’s Talking About the Weather Everybody’s Talking About the Weather

The last few years have seen renewed interest in the Weathermen.

Mar 30, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Jeremy Varon

In America In America

If the words "first novel" and "arrival of a major American talent" appear on the front flap of a dust jacket, you can almost be sure that the picture on the back flap will depic...

Mar 25, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Philip Connors

Water’s Edge Water’s Edge

Manhattan is a tight little island. Around thirteen miles long, it has a width that varies from two miles to a few hundred feet.

Mar 25, 2004 / Books & the Arts / John Palattella

Letter From Algeria Letter From Algeria

Excavating the disappeared.

Mar 25, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Jack Brown

The New Critic The New Critic

The American foreign affairs establishment seems finally to have gotten worried about the antics of the Boy Emperor.

Mar 18, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Chalmers Johnson

Moses Goes Down Moses Goes Down

If upon reading the first sentence of Moses Isegawa's debut novel, Abyssinian Chronicles, in an Amsterdam bookstore a few years back, I quickly re-read it a few times and committ...

Mar 18, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Matt Steinglass

The Secret Sharer The Secret Sharer

Although the epigraph of Damon Galgut's novel is taken from Chekhov, it is the ghost of Graham Greene that hovers most palpably over The Good Doctor, and even in the cadence of i...

Mar 18, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Claire Messud

Accidental Friends Accidental Friends

"One does not jail Voltaire." So responded the president of France to calls that Jean-Paul Sartre be arrested for backing an independent Algeria.

Mar 18, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Russell Jacoby

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