Books and Ideas

Les Étrangers Les Étrangers

Sagesse (meaning "wisdom") LaBasse, the narrator of Claire Messud's second novel, The Last Life, is French-Algerian on her father's side and American on her mother's.

Sep 30, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Jay Parini

Our Prison Complex Our Prison Complex

This past winter both Edwin Meese and Gen. Barry McCaffrey expressed surprising misgivings about the current direction of the War on Drugs.

Sep 23, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Theodore Hamm

Sunstein’s Law Sunstein’s Law

He criticizes the liberal Warren Court for breaking new constitutional ground on too many fronts too broadly, while also giving no quarter to the constitutional theories of conse...

Sep 23, 1999 / Books & the Arts / David Rudenstine

Decolonizing the Mind Decolonizing the Mind

As Hawaii's first American century comes to an end, marking grim anniversaries of overthrow and forced annexation by the United States, a groundswell for Native Hawaiian sovereig...

Sep 16, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Mindy Pennybacker

Behind the Blue Helmets Behind the Blue Helmets

The new US envoy to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, has personal experience of how frustrating it can be to negotiate, even when speaking in the name of that mega-clich&ea...

Sep 9, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Ian Williams

Candid in Camera Candid in Camera

It all began in the heat of the summer of 1940. Hitler was at his peak in Europe. France had been defeated.

Sep 9, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Gore Vidal

Kilroy Was There Kilroy Was There

In the summer of 1941, Adolf Hitler's apparently invincible Wehrmacht was grinding hundreds of miles into the Soviet Union, spreading mayhem all the way.

Sep 2, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Tom Wicker

Harnessing the Rising Sun Harnessing the Rising Sun

Americans aren't much for history these days. History is for Europeans--for Germans, with their thickets of theory, and the French, who are forever going on about their revolutio...

Sep 2, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Patrick Smith

ER to HRC–Come in, Dear! ER to HRC–Come in, Dear!

Hillary Dear,

Sep 2, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Elsa Dixler

Reality Check–Virtual, of Course Reality Check–Virtual, of Course

A perplexing disconnect from reality haunts the American financial community.

Aug 19, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Larry Hedrick

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