Books and Ideas

Frederick Seidel of St. Louis Frederick Seidel of St. Louis

Frederick Seidel of St. Louis, Missouri, is probably the last American decadent--certainly he is the most distinguished.

Dec 12, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Robyn Creswell

Who Will Tell the People? Who Will Tell the People?

Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers is Daniel Ellsberg's story of his personal journey from being in the early 1960s a "dedicated cold warrior" who supported A...

Dec 5, 2002 / Books & the Arts / David Rudenstine

Diary of the Bridget Joneses Diary of the Bridget Joneses

If single women have been told once, they've been told a thousand times: Don't think you're ever too successful or too young to have your ovaries shrivel up and die. Use 'em or...

Dec 5, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Ashley Nelson

Rawls and Us Rawls and Us

The late John Rawls was, by all accounts, a remarkably modest and generous person, much beloved by his friends and students, and profoundly uninterested in the kinds of fame an...

Dec 5, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman

The New Apartheid The New Apartheid

Ashwin Desai's "We Are the Poors" is one of the best books yet on globalization and resistance.

Nov 26, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Naomi Klein

Rethinking the Movement Rethinking the Movement

As any casual observer of mega-bookstore shelves knows, the history of the modern civil rights movement is a well-studied field.

Nov 26, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Eric Arnesen

‘Obscure as That Heaven of the Jews’ ‘Obscure as That Heaven of the Jews’

In the rabbi's parable a lame one climbs Onto a blind one's shoulders and together They take the fruit of the garden of the Lord.

Nov 26, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Robert Pinsky

Wheeling My Father Through the Alzheimer’s Ward Wheeling My Father Through the Alzheimer’s Ward

Here where everyone forgets everything, including where they are or what they are fighting to remember,

Nov 26, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Edward Hirsch

The Call of the Junco Bird The Call of the Junco Bird

An English woman I've never met calls to read me her new poem about the little Texas junco bird whose cry sounded to the early settlers

Nov 26, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Edward Hirsch

The Humanitarian Temptation The Humanitarian Temptation

In 2000, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan posed a question to the Millennium Summit of the UN: "If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on s...

Nov 21, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Ian Williams

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