Backbeat in China Backbeat in China
A hundred days ago Wu'er Kaixi was a fugitive.... Yesterday, before an audience of 800 Americans and Chinese at Brandeis University, he showed what brought a 21-year-old Beijing N...
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Birthday Poem Birthday Poem
Hot, rained-on, packed-down straw, strewn then abandoned between the rows of eggplant, tomato plants, onion, and herbs catches the evening's last September gnats in pale mats and ...
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Lynne McMahon
A Bombmaker of Conscience A Bombmaker of Conscience
We are all fascinated by the lives of the powerful and famous, and in the last part of the twentieth century Andrei Sakharov became one of Russia's most famous. He burst onto the ...
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Dusko Doder
A Word to Graduates: Organize! A Word to Graduates: Organize!
It's boring but do it, says the playwright. Otherwise, you allow evil to settle in.
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Tony Kushner
A Whole Earth Catalogue A Whole Earth Catalogue
In the United States a deeply rooted bias toward the practical renders all knowledge, even the most sublime forms of wisdom, merely an instrumental good. This pragmatic streak ten...
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Eric Zencey
Testing Times in Higher Ed Testing Times in Higher Ed
The SAT has been on the ropes lately. The University of California system has threatened to quit using the test for its freshman admissions, arguing that the exam has done more ha...
Jun 6, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Peter Sacks
‘Blue Clear Down’ ‘Blue Clear Down’
Late in her life, Lorine Niedecker collected several dozen of her poems in handmade books that she gave to three friends. One poem common to all three books is "Who Was Mary Shell...
Jun 6, 2002 / Books & the Arts / John Palattella
The Growing Nuclear Peril The Growing Nuclear Peril
A more virulent nuclear era has superseded the perils of the cold war.
Jun 6, 2002 / Feature / Jonathan Schell
Ghazal for Lauren Ghazal for Lauren
Sister, they say heed the hymn in your heart. You've learned you've an odd rhythm in your heart. You and I versus our brothers: pitched war. The four of us in the swim of your ...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Leslie Chang
The Browning of America The Browning of America
In the past two decades, Richard Rodriguez has offered us a gamut of anecdotes, mostly about himself in action in an environment that is not always attuned to his own inner life. ...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Ilan Stavans