Common People
A wonderful new book by Stephen Wade, America’s greatest living folklorist, chronicles the history of the country’s folk music.
Ronald Radosh
· 16 min read
Art & Culture
A collection of 878 posts
Spells that Sell
John Updike, Alice Hoffman, and the golden age of “witch lit.”
Kevin Mims
· 11 min read
Trauma and Terror
If you’re not already familiar with the casus belli that ignited the Gaza war, watching the fifth season of ‘Fauda’ will be good for you, but it will also be bad for you.
Michael J. Totten
· 11 min read
From Atmosphere to Empire
U2 reconsidered at fifty.
David Cohen
· 12 min read
The Ape in the Basement
Why is masturbation so shameful?
Robert Lynch
· 13 min read
Bad Criticism
Name-calling, guilt-by-association, and other unscrupulous methods of argument are polluting our discourse.
Rosalind Arden
· 11 min read
The $64 Question, Again
Anna D. Shapiro’s recent revival of Eric Bentley’s 1972 play about the HUAC hearings offered entertainment along with the pleasures of moral certainty and ideological reinforcement.
Thomas Doherty
· 11 min read
Naked in America
To be naked is to give up obsessive self-presentation and take off the mask.
Robert Lynch
· 10 min read
‘The Battle of Algiers’ at Sixty
Watching Gillo Pontecorvo’s film six decades after its release permits a nuanced understanding of the events that it portrays, which was unavailable when it first came out.
Shalom Lappin
· 13 min read
Red Reign
A thrash-metal classic turns forty.
Noel Yaxley
· 9 min read
Stories You Don’t Want to Be Told
A new exhibition curated by Lars von Trier provides a fascinating look at who and what has influenced one of the world’s most prodigiously gifted and provocative filmmakers.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 30 min read
L’Affaire Shirer Revisited
The rise, fall, and rise again of one of the 20th century’s most important journalists.
Thomas Doherty
· 10 min read
The Beautiful and Banned
There is a rather large difference between the banned books promoted by celebrities and genuinely transgressive and provocative writing.
Josh Allan
· 5 min read
Together Alone
American individualism and the western, from Fred Zinnemann and John Ford to Larry McMurtry and Taylor Sheridan.
Craig Clifford
· 8 min read
Billy Bunter and the Man from Animal Farm
A look back at the 20th century’s most entertaining literary spat—one of the few such encounters that Orwell emphatically lost.
David Cohen
· 15 min read