Cables Coming in From the Cold Cables Coming in From the Cold
Nearly four years ago, soon after the initial public release by the National Security Agency (NSA) of its long-secret Venona archive--decoded Soviet intelligence messages transmi...
Jun 17, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Walter Schneir and Miriam Schneir
Eat, Drink and Be Chary Eat, Drink and Be Chary
J.M. Coetzee's new novella, The Lives of Animals, must be some kind of first.
Jun 17, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Benjamin Kunkel
A Bookmaker’s Tale A Bookmaker’s Tale
"The real money in books was going to be made not by writing or publishing but by buying and selling the publishing companies themselves." Thus Michael Korda writes in his new me...
Jun 10, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Gayle Feldman
The Company Picnic The Company Picnic
A Wall Street Journal poll of 350 major corporations found that the median compensation, including stock options, for CEOs last year was $2,635,799. That was a growth of 3.1 perc...
Jun 10, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Robert Sherrill
Mouth of the Dying Day Mouth of the Dying Day
W.H. Auden observed that biographies "are always superfluous and usually in bad taste," but Edward Mendelson's book on him, Later Auden, is neither.
Jun 3, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Grace Schulman
Master of All He Surveys Master of All He Surveys
As the presidential election of 1996 got under way, the press began to report that Bill Clinton's campaign strategy was heavily influenced by the advice of a shadowy figure who h...
Jun 3, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Schell
Emancipation Proclamation Emancipation Proclamation
Upon his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind some 2,000 pages of a never-finished second novel--more than forty years of fine-tuning what his literary executor, John F.
May 27, 1999 / Books & the Arts / John Leonard
White Shirt, Blue Collar White Shirt, Blue Collar
In 1992, as the United States wallowed in recession, presidential candidate Bill Clinton began to use the term "working middle class" to describe millions of Americans who were b...
May 27, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stanley Aronowitz
Rolling Thunder: the Rerun Rolling Thunder: the Rerun
People concerned about the US-led NATO war against Yugoslavia find much to reflect upon in the Vietnam experience.
May 27, 1999 / Books & the Arts / George Kenney
Leisurely Pleasure Leisurely Pleasure
This brief essay is taken from the latest book by Amos Oz, The Story Begins: Essays on Literature (Harcourt Brace).
May 27, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Amos Oz