A collection of 221 posts
The publication of his electrifying dispatch from the Kentucky Derby on May 2nd, 1970, had announced him as among the most innovative and powerful voices in American letters.
Gregg finishes the book by concluding that the success of Western civilisation rests on the “four theses” of creation, freedom, justice, and faith.
The War of Return is an important book and, unquestionably, a welcome corrective to the plethora of myths, lies, and misconceptions that litter the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“What’s it about?” is usually the first question we ask when someone recommends a new book, and it’s the wrong question.
Easy Rider is an important movie—much more important than a simple measure of its quality would suggest—which is probably why the American Film Institute, among others, continues to rate it so highly.
He cannot help being true to himself. In this calm, blithe, and objective memoir, Allen emerges, at wild odds with his comedic persona, as a very tough, independent artist, a passionate lover of women, avowing his innocence of the one and only charge ever leveled against him in 84 years.
In Pepys’s time a scarlet cross on the door denoted an infected household and sentinels stood guard outside to keep people inside.
Chinatown is a remarkable blend of screenwriter Robert Towne and director Roman Polanski’s antipodal sensibilities.
For people without a foothold in the new service and financial businesses, it was harder to make ends meet.
As an institution grows and evolves, it inevitably requires reform, but that task can only be entrusted to those who have its best interests at heart.
In February, the Atlantic published a much discussed essay by David Brooks entitled “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” Brooks noted that the conditions that once made nuclear families viable—strong unions, plenty of jobs that paid living wages, inexpensive housing and transportation and education costs, stay-at-home mothers, high numbers
Great books require intelligence and judgment, and the exploration of sometimes quite fundamental disagreement, from the outset.
Writing about decadence can be symptomatic of the condition.
Atwood’s innovation is to give this dystopian nightmare the distinctly female framing of domestic and sexual enslavement—as experienced by “Offred,” a “Handmaid” assigned to a man named Fred and his wife for surrogate motherhood via monthly copulation.
Last month the Huffington Post published an essay by Claire Fallon entitled “Was this Decade the Beginning of the End of the Great White Male Writer?” Fallon celebrated the notion that white men are losing their prominence in contemporary American literature and that the best books being published in America