Seventy Years of Spite and Sophistication
Elvis Costello at three score and ten.
Dave Thompson
· 20 min read
Art and Culture
A collection of 721 posts
Killing for a Quiet Life
John Krasinski’s dystopian horror trilogy imagines a biblical plague visited on the din of modernity.
Thomas Larson
· 7 min read
America’s Last Great Political Novel
In anticipation of the Democrats’ Convention in Chicago, a look back at Joe Klein’s splendid 1996 novel ‘Primary Colors’—a fascinating snapshot of Democratic Party politics at the end of the 20th century.
Kevin Mims
· 22 min read
Texas Porn Star Massacres
Ti West’s clever and original ‘X’ trilogy is elevated postmodern horror at its finest and its director’s best work to date.
Allan Stratton
· 12 min read
Rereading Philip Roth Today
Roth’s early works portray Jewish characters who are fearful of antisemitism in America as paranoid. He later changed his mind—and so have I.
Peter C. Herman
· 12 min read
Dutchmen on the Hudson
In the 21st instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes how the arrival of Dutch fur traders sparked an upheaval in regional Indigenous geopolitics.
Greg Koabel
· 19 min read
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Richard Morton Jack’s comprehensive new biography of Nick Drake offers a glimpse of a brilliant but troubled soul.
Matt Hanson
· 10 min read
Abiding Legends
Richard Matheson, George R. Stewart, and the birth of the Calipocalypse.
Kevin Mims
· 23 min read
Art over Man: The Roger Waters Test Case
When we create art, we are our best selves, better than the selves we are outside of art.
Thomas P. Balazs
· 9 min read
The Birth of Quebec
In the twentieth instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes how Samuel de Champlain and Récollet missionaries established a fledgling French colony in what we now call Quebec City.
Greg Koabel
· 17 min read
England’s Daydreaming
Robyn Hitchcock’s new memoir takes us back to 1967—a year the British singer-songwriter never outgrew.
Dave Thompson
· 12 min read
France’s Founding Fathers: A Review of ‘House of Lilies’
In a new book, Justine Firnhaber-Baker tells the story of the Capetian dynasty (987–1328), whose rulers stitched a set of medieval duchies and counties into a single kingdom.
Charlotte Allen
· 20 min read
The Roots of Progressive Radicalism: Nellie Bowles vs. Musa al-Gharbi
In two new books, a journalist and an academic offer competing explanations for the extremist ideological tendencies within left-wing cultural, academic, activist, and political institutions.
Jonathan Kay
· 16 min read
Too Much Chocolate
Fifty years of Robert Cormier’s “classic” young-adult novel is more than enough.
Kevin Mims
· 9 min read
Roger Corman: A Filmmaker’s Filmmaker
An account of all the lives Corman touched, the careers he helped to jump-start, and the genres he pioneered would fill several books.
Jacob Bielecki
· 12 min read