Cultural Criticism and Analysis

Neo-Macho Man Neo-Macho Man

Say what you will about oil and hegemony, but the pending invasion of Iraq is more than just a geopolitical act. It's also the manifestation of a cultural attitude.

Mar 6, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Richard Goldstein

Mary McCarthy at 90 Mary McCarthy at 90

Mary McCarthy would have turned 90 on June 21, a fact that is itself astonishing to those who remember her flagrant youth, when her sharp style made her the most feared and forthri...

Aug 15, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Morris Dickstein

1776 and All That 1776 and All That

The country is riven and ailing, with a guns-plus-butter nuttiness in some of its governing echelons and the sort of lapsed logic implicit in the collapse of trust in money-center...

Jul 3, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Edward Hoagland

In Cold Type In Cold Type

Southern Exposure, which somehow looks--even in its third decade, in the twenty-first century--as if very advanced high school students had just stapled it together and put it on ...

Jun 27, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Amy Wilentz

DYNASTIES! DYNASTIES!

How their wealth and power threaten democracy

Jun 20, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Kevin Phillips

Riders on the Storm Riders on the Storm

Dread ripples through me as I listen to a phone message from our manager saying that we (The Doors) have another offer of huge amounts of money if we would just allow one of our s...

Jun 20, 2002 / Books & the Arts / John Densmore

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

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

The Statue of Liberty

Patriotism’s Secret History Patriotism’s Secret History

Our most cherished national symbols—from the Pledge of Allegiance to "America the Beautiful" to Lady Liberty's poetry—are rooted in liberal ideals.

May 16, 2002 / Peter Dreier and Dick Flacks

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