Cultural Criticism and Analysis

Unhappy Meal Unhappy Meal

Stuart Klawans reviews Fast Food Nation, a film that aspires to activism as it undermines its own anticorporate message.

Nov 30, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

The Man Who Loved Children The Man Who Loved Children

Adam Gopnik's Through the Children's Gate details the trials of a very smug and special class of parents raising children in post-9/11 New York.

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Suzy Hansen

Coming to America! Coming to America!

Reviews of films from the vulgar to the magisterial: Borat, Flags of Our Fathers, For Your Consideration, Our Daily Bread and Fur.

Nov 16, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Cultural Famine: A Cycle Cultural Famine: A Cycle

Famine is at its worst when people waste away and die. But there is another kind of famine: the death of the human soul--the emptiness and senseless cynicism in this country that h...

Oct 8, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Walter Mosley

Death Trip Death Trip

Philip Roth and Joan Didion have each written compellingly about death, but their insights about dying and mourning signify a retreat from the world rather than an embrace of the f...

Oct 5, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Richard Goldstein

The Missionary Position The Missionary Position

Like radical Islamists and American interventionists, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's The Caged Virgin and Irshad Manji's The Trouble With Islam Today express great concern for Muslim women. But...

Jun 1, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Laila Lalami

Keeping It Real Keeping It Real

In Songs of Experience, Martin Jay examines modern debates over the relationship between theory and the lived world.

May 24, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Jackson Lears

Dead Souls Dead Souls

Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, written during the cultural renaissance that followed the Mexican Revolution, is a marvel of storytelling and testament to the power of the word.

May 18, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Carmen Boullosa

Zones of Disengagement Zones of Disengagement

In Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, Stefan Collini encapsulates the paradoxes that dominate discussion of the English cultural landscape.

May 11, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Richard Vinen

High Culture, Low Politics High Culture, Low Politics

In The Seduction of Culture in German History, Wolf Lepenies reflects on shifting manifestations of German philosophy and culture and considers the lessons they offer for Europe an...

May 11, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Andreas Huyssen

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