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Articles of NoteThe cognitive capacities that have made us so successful as a species also work together to create a human tendency for religious thinking... more» Think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a politicized financial disaster? Just wait until pension funds implode. Jon Entine explains... more» Is evolution taking the species of the world toward greater improvement? S.J. Gould claimed not, but his view now has its critics... more» Frankenfoods may be better for you, and for the planet, than you think, argues James McWilliams. They do not derserve all the bad press... more» “This din of brasses, tin pans and kettles, this Chinese clatter with wood sticks and ear-cutting scalping knives...” Critics did not always like Wagner... more» Britain cannot forever bury all its waste, nor is it able to recycle what it cannot bury. Why not just burn it?... more» Military analysts are writing off high-tech warfare in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq. But you just wait... more» Would a world without vultures be a nicer place? Don’t even think about it. Constance Casey explains... more» If democracy is in trouble across the globe, blame it on China, an authoritarian power with the economic clout to back those dictators that please it... more» Except for the miracles of Sherman�s and Grant�s decisive victories in the field, Lincoln would have been defeated in 1864. How different things would look... more» Like it or not, maybe as much as 40% of your political attitudes are determined by your genes. James Q. Wilson explains... more» John Updike, novelist, man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce, and life’s adventures, is dead... AP ... NYT ... Telegraph ... Guardian ... NYT ... London Times ... WP ... New Yorker ... LA Times ... Guardian ... TPM ... Boston Globe ... London Times ... National Post ... WSJ ... LA Times ... Guardian ... Forbes ... SF Chron ... Slate ... Guardian ... Philly Inq ... TLS ... Independent ... Weekly Standard ... New Republic ... Guardian ... Michael Dirda ... Morris Dickstein What does a woman want? Does she know? Does science know? Is this a deeply unanswerable question?... more» The entire panoply of problems that John Maynard Keynes faced in the 1930s has come back to us. We still need him... more» From Nebraska to Nepal, people praise their deities, attend services, perform holy rites, study sacred texts. Does it really make them better off?... more» The rise of consumer society in Britain in the 17th century went along with a desire to attain markers of wealth, status, and good taste... more» President Obama’s brave inaugural speech rejected the political philosophy of the previous administration more than any other in history... more» Robbie Burns, a poet who refused to blame all his country’s woes on the English, is still the voice of Scotland... more» Ill-fitting gowns, lavender candles, and whale songs. No wonder men struggle with the spa experience... more» No more scribbles. What we need is a “slow writing” movement that extols the virtues of neat, expressive penmanship... more» Edgar Allan Poe was also a player of hoaxes, a plagiarist, and substance abuser. But oh, how he could write... more» From gorilla walking sticks to crows who like bug fishing, there are plenty of clever non-humans who use tools... more» Anti-Israel sentiment is morphing into anti-Jewish sentiment, as more and more people project their disdain for the modern world on to “the Jew”... more» The death of the newspaper. Then come to think of it, newspapers have been dying for ever so long a time. Jill Lepore explains... more» Call it the violence network. It’s biased, gruesome, and totally compelling. Al-Jazeera can make you think differently about war... more» ...so help me God.” What does the history of presidential inaugural addresses tell us about the American story?... more» John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, is dead at the age of 85... LAT ... Guardian ... Independent ... Melvyn Bragg ... NYT ... Express ... Times ... IHT ... Guardian ... Times ... Guardian ... Telegraph ... Times Andrew Wyeth, austere American artist with a hold on the popular imagination, is dead at 91... WSJ ... Wash Post ... NYT ... Boston Globe ... Baltimore Sun ... LAT ... NYT ... SF Chron ... Time ... London Times ... NYMag ... American Spectator On Iraqi battlefields, robots are killing the bad guys and saving U.S. lives. But today�s PackBots and Ravens are still primitive machines. Just wait... more» The end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability, says Hua Hsu. What will the new mainstream look like? How will whites fit into it?... more» Story after story in the U.S. media depict Mexico as a country overrun by drug gangs and murder. It’s time to say no to the stereotype... more» She stole his heart, so he gave her his kidney. She filed for divorce and now he wants it back. Only the lawyers are happy... more» Our DNA deals each of us a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes: curiosity, ambition, empathy, love of novelty or security. For Steven Pinker, it’s my genome, myself... more» Felix Mendelssohn was for most of the 19th century considered the equal of Beethoven and Bach. What happened?... more» When people posed for portraits in the 19th century, they tried to convey status, character, modernity. For photography, not much has changed... more» Cities: centers of intellectual life, politics, art, and the new. Also: cholera, grime, and kinds of exhausting buzz that actually harm the human brain... more» The culture wars haven’t ended, they’ve just reached an ugly stalemate, says Liz McMillen. Consider David Horowitz’s recent visit to the MLA... more» Hannah Arendt is still a thinker for our time, says Adam Kirsch: a time when failed states have again and again become the settings for mass murder... more» Who Checks the Spell-Checkers? Microsoft Word’s dictionary is old and outdated, says Chris Wilson... more» Obama has charisma, regarded as a feature you cannot ever really understand. No, say others, you can analyze charisma, break it down into parts... more» While impoverished Rwandans bear the costs of conservation and saving the gorillas, the national tourism industry reaps millions... more» Mone was bored, so she pulled out her old diaries to write a novel about her life. She curled up in bed and began typing on her mobile phone... more» Simply vilifying the rich, with strikes and class violence, have lost their lustre for Venezuelans. After Hugo Ch�vez, maybe real democracy... more» The Stilwell Road: more than a thousand U.S. troops died building the road in Burma. For some in China and India today, this neglected route is a lifeline... more» From early on, Samuel Huntington drew vociferous critics, but that is the mark of a scholar with an important message, says Francis Fukuyama... more» Pro-Stalinist books – journalism, fiction, pseudo-history – are found all over the bookstalls of Russia today. Even school history texts... more» Asked where he’d be willing to go to teach philosophy, the young job seeker replied, “Anywhere on the planet, paid or not”... more» Samuel P. Huntington, versatile scholar whose idea of a “clash of civilizations” was vastly influential, is dead at 81... Forbes ... WSJ ... Wash Post ... London Times ... Harvard Did the universe exist before it existed, bouncing back even then from a previous collapse and bounce? Ad infinitum... more» Changes in China that began with Deng Xiaoping were matters of subterfuge as much as new ideas, says Gordon Chang... part 1 ... part 2 ... part 3 ... part 4 Burger King perfume. That conquest may be yours, if only you can make yourself smell like a Whopper hot off the grill... more» Baffled Americans hoping to understand that very European hero, Tintin, should look at him through the prism of post-war France... more» Pay close attention to those Greek riots, says Robert Kaplan. At a time of economic upheaval, they may presage problems elsewhere in the world in 2009... more» Harold Pinter, playwright who could find the ominous in the everyday, is dead at the age of 78... NYT ... Telegraph ... London Times ... Guardian ... Independent ... Wash Post ... London Times ... Guardian ... a negative view. Your ad on Arts & Letters Daily puts you in contact with writers, editors, and opinion makers around the globe. Our traffic stats are impressive... more info Pope Benedict is not infallible, but he’s not omnifallible either. Save the rain forests, he urges. Okay, but save mankind from homosexuality?... more» ... more» In his campaign, Obama declared the U.S. must �lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.� The Neocons are not dead yet... more» Time for old feminists like Germaine Greer to �step aside,� she says. �It�s like, we�re grateful for what you did, but it�s time for you to hand over�... more» Gilbert Kaplan only conducts Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. Is he a charlatan? Yes, say some New York Philharmonic members... more» ... But not everyone agrees. The economic downturn has been hard for many people, but hard for economists in a special way. There are the smart guys who were supposed to know... more» Conor Cruise O’Brien, Irish politician, diplomat, and man of letters, is dead at the age of 91... Irish Times ... Jewcy ... Open Democracy ... Guardian ... London Times ... NYT ... Open Democracy ... Wash Post Carl Orff, creator of the dramatic cantata Carmina Burana, hid an ugly secret about his betrayal of a friend under the Third Reich... more» “I have great admiration for the American people,” says Chinese banker Gao Xiqing. “But you need someone to tell you the truth”... more» Stalin, violent? Yes, but extreme measures were needed to modernize an agrarian economy. That’s what Russian school kids are taught today... more» John Milton was a champion of liberty, to be sure. But in his language and outlook, he was not a modern “secular liberal”... more» Christian thinkers in the past tried to gain converts by using the categories of Taoism, the Buddha, and Confucius. This time may yet come again... more» In the North Korean prison where Shin Dong-hyuk was born and where he watched his mother hanged, inmates never saw a picture of Kim Jong Il... more» The Max Planck Institute journal is a very sober publication. So why did it run an ad for a hot Chinese strip joint on its front cover?... more» Religious couples have more children. So does belief increase fertility, or does having a big family actually cause people to be more religious?... more» Academic performance of kids in U.S. schools would be enhanced by getting rid of the worst 10% of teachers. How do you know who they are?... more» Chinese art and us: we shipped our vanguard dreams abroad and have brought home a cheaper imitation art, one with the fatal taint of melamine... more» Like a Romper Room for adults or Oprah with a whip, Judge Judy savages litigants for wasting her time. What else would she like to do for $38 million a year?... more» The deployment of Hazara policemen in Pashtun areas of Afghanistan has in the short run worked well for NATO, as it did for the British long ago... more» “What we’ve done in higher education,” said an administrator, “is let our dreams and aspirations dictate our cost structure.” For colleges, the dream is over... more» The bubble in contemporary art is about to pop. It shows all the classic features of the South Sea bubble of 1720 or the tulip madness of the 1630s... more» Baby boomers played by the rules, bought property, diversified. They now look toward less than golden retirement years... more» Naomi Klein never tempers her arguments to make converts from the center. The left does not need the mainstream center, she thinks... more» Is Lehman Bros. CEO Dick Fuld the true villain in the Wall Street collapse, or is he just the scapegoat for the sins of everyone else?... more» Stories are central to how we think about the world: from the individual to the wide sweep of history. To think yourself into the mind of another... more» Marion Cook, “greatest Negro violinist.” Maybe: yet both too far and in ways too close to our times, Cook�s music is not what we want in our iPods... more» What do girls want? A new series of vampire novels throws light onto the complexities of female adolescent desire. Caitlin Flanagan explains... more» British men and women are now the most sexually promiscuous people in any big western industrial nation, a new study shows... more» Jørn Utzon, visionary architect of one of the greatest buildings of the 20th century, the Sydney Opera House, is dead at the age of 90... Sydney Morning Herald ... Telegraph ... Art Daily ... NYT ... Australian ... London Times ... LAT Maybe it’s that mix of warm water and naked flesh. From the baths of Pompeii to Swiss spas, there’s something dirty about getting clean... more» Yiddish, a language once spoken by more than 10 million Jews, had a profound effect on American culture in the first half of the 20th century... more» When it comes to finding patterns of meaning in meaningless noise, human beings are incorrigible. Michael Shermer explains... more» Broccoli trees against a craggy backdrop of sourdough mountains, a lonely boat tossed on a red cabbage sea. Carl Warner’s edible fantasies... more» Manhattan is the capital of people who live alone. Yet are New Yorkers lonelier? Far from it: studies show urban alienation is largely a myth... more» We are immensely fortunate to have a critic of James Wood’s talent, erudition, and judgment. But if criticism follows his lead, it will end up in a desert... more» In web searches, scholars tend to follow one hyperlink to the next, in a journey that resembles a plunge down a rabbit hole. Is this any way to do research?... more» The history of the bagel is not just a history of Jews in America – it is a history of America itself. How else to explain a bagel with Swiss cheese and ham?... more» “Pick me as a mate,” says the peacock. “I must be a fit guy, since I carry this wild, colorful tail around with me and still survive”... more» George W. Bush’s nostrils always ran ahead of his mind, twitching like a bull in a rodeo or a frisking wild horse, hinting at danger to come... more» In meritocracy – or so it seemed fifty years ago – we would look up to the best of us. It turns out now, however, that we look up to celebrities. A big difference... more» John Milton, boring? Paradise Lost has a little bit of something for everybody. Hot sex! Hellfire! Some damned good poetry, too... more» Who’d want to make a movie that looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting? Thomas Kinkade, obviously. But who could possibly sit through it?... more» “I’ve seen too many peoples dismissed as not ready for self-government,” says Condoleezza Rice. Latin Americans, Asians, Africans – even black Americans... more» At a time when Chinese financial power is so strong, the U.S. government is – alas! – in no mood to hear about the murder of Falun Gong members... more» Distorting art market perceptions. The auction houses use one price for their presale estimates then inflate the actual sale results with their own premium... more» Greenland has rich deposits of oil, zinc, and diamonds. But will independence from Denmark do anything about its suicide rate?... more» The N-word is flourishing among young hip-hop Latinos. Should we care? Raquel Cepeda asks the question... more» An early rival to win the prize for a way to find longitude at sea was a chap from Yorkshire named Jeremy Thacker. Now it seems both he and his ideas were a hoax... more» Eat local? Cold storage for that local fruit may produce more carbon dioxide than shipping New Zealand apples to your market... more» Malcolm Gladwell, one critic fears, “has come to his own tipping point, or – to be fuddy-duddy – fork in the road. This way, guru. That way, serious writer”... more» Pairing writer with subject is an art, says NYRB editor Robert Silvers. Like the late Barbara Epstein, he feels an “intense admiration for wonderful writers”... more» A spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a wolf cub changed Mark Rowlands’s life. From that moment, human company never quite matched up... more» Avoiding clichés isn’t rocket science. At the end of the day, it’s a matter of just being your own fairly unique self. And not saying things you shouldn’t of... more» John Leonard, critic with a vast range and a wondrous way with metaphors, is dead at the age of 69... AP ... Chronicle Review ... NY Observer ... Wash Post ... Kansas City Star ... NYT ... Slate ... Boston Globe Michael Crichton, who delighted lovers of his fiction and enraged environmentalists, is dead at the age of 66... NYT ... AP ... Reason ... Wash Post ... James Fallows ... LAT ... NY Observer ... London Times ... NYT ... Bloomberg ... USAToday ... Wired ... Info Week ... Weekly Standard ... Crichton on Green religion “Poverty and disadvantage are a better preparation for success than wealth and capitalizing on advantage.” Malcolm Gladwell wonders... more» No matter the money or effort you lavish on your body, regardless of pampering or cholesterol monitoring, it has no future. Your genes know this... more» The human moral sense is neither the one nor the other: it is, Jonathan Haidt can show, both biologically evolved and culturally sensitive... more» “I want to make damn sure there’s a tape recorder running for my last words.” No fake deathbed conversions for Richard Dawkins... more» Studs Terkel, “guerilla journalist” who turned the voices of ordinary Americans into a font of history, is dead at the age of 96... Chic Tribune ... Sun-Times ... LAT ... NYT ... Edward Rothstein |
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New Books�Success naturally confirms us in a favorable opinion of our own abilities,� wrote Samuel Johnson. Jane Austen had read Johnson on conceit... more» Long live philosophers! As any good analyst would point out, that’s not just a spirited apostrophe. It’s a fact... more» Newspapers have to deliver the news. If they do it with style and energy, William Randolph Hearst knew, and readers will follow... more» “Sashenka experienced the despair of the damned. The unthinkable had happened.” Interrogated in Stalin’s terror, she broke... more»
God, John Milton said, “hath yet ever had this island under the special indulgent eye of his providence.” He has the same extravagant view of himself... more» Not for historian Barry Cunliffe are �the events and personalities flitting on the surface� of history. He looks for the forces that lie beneath... more» Plato called it �the greatest incentive to evil,� and maybe he was right. Yet we all succumb to pleasure: booze, chocolate, sex – or just a warm bath... more» A perfect forgery may give us the same visual pleasure as an original, but we still feel cheated: it lacks the originality of mind we expect fom art... more» He championed green issues, sex reform, and animal rights in Victoria’s reign. Why don’t we know who Edward Carpenter is?... more» Since the welfare state in Britain takes care of so much in personal life, there’s not much choice left to people outside of sex and shopping... more» The tragedy of Lincoln and Darwin: vast death was the necessary agent both of natural selection and of ending slavery... more» Malcolm Gladwell’s nifty little stories may seem on the face of it to explain his general rules. Often they do not... more» Darwin’s work on the common ancestry came not from mere curiosity, but from a desire to show that African slaves had the same roots as their masters... more» �To draw its picture is like a blind man touching a snowflake,� said Paul Dirac of his own work. �One touch and it�s gone�... more» It was brutal, heroic, and a victory for the longbow. How did the Battle of Agincourt look through the eyes of an archer?... more» If a single Soviet soldier had fired into the unarmed crowds in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1991, the USSR would have collapsed. But not firing also meant... more» Every young generation adopts and adapts Romeo and Juliet as its own image of romantic revolt against intolerance... more» Homo sapiens is a species obsessed with creating artistic experiences with which to amuse, shock, titillate, and enrapture itself... more» Leafing through The Complete Playboy Centerfolds, you will be sure to note the anatomical variety among bunnies. Their nipples, for one thing... more» Reuel Wilson’s childhood was lived between a Scylla of a father on one side and a Charybdis of a mother on the other... more» Women do not want careers, says Megan Basham. They deeply, really, truly want to stay home and raise the kids... more» Facts do not solve problems, Robert Hutchins thought. In truth, facts are “the core of an anti-intellectual curriculum�... more» Obsession can be genuinely agonizing and disruptive. It can also be highly valued in an artist, a lover, or a doctor... more» The mailman will one day do his rounds whistling atonal non-melodies, Anton Webern predicted. Why does this seem so implausible?... more» No rational justification can be offered for trust and self-sacrifice. But without them, social life is chaos, a war of all against all... more» Marc Chagall steadily revised and at times even reinvented his themes as he was exposed to works by old masters in the Louvre and elsewhere... more» Underneath George Plimpton’s deeply amiable exterior was someone who could come across as a Man Without Qualities... more» For Simon Schama, the American story is a compelling one. New plot lines may now emerge, but we’ve known the central character for a very long time... more» In New York, Herbert Spencer was feted at a Delmonico’s banquet. The fawning tributes bored him, while his audience was baffled by his speech... more» Jonathan Bate has written as enthralling, as eloquent an evocation of Shakespeare as one is likely ever to encounter... more» Might artistic talent have evolved as a kind of ornamental capacity analogous to the peacock’s tail? Some people think so... more» Many politicians, Hollywood stars, and NGOs have fallen in love with Hugo Ch�vez, treating him as a savior of the poor... more» In 1973, Morton Smith shook the world of Christian scholarship. Was there a secret “evil” version of Mark’s Gospel?... more» The accommodation by politicians was bad enough. Even more depressing was the role of artists and intellectuals in occupied France... more» Being human is not a simple matter of stimulus and response: it is shaped by history, thought, time, and space – not to mention tears, snot, and earwax... more» After the war, Germans liked stories of gallant resistance to the Nazis, especially Claus von Stauffenberg and the doomed plot to blow up Hitler... more» Mark Bittman’s approach to food is one of ease, simplicity, and quality: this means he walks a fine and constantly shifting line... more» Those Pre-Rafaelite oddfellows: Ruskin’s inability to consummate his marriage runs parallel to Rossetti’s inability to resist seducing everyone he met... more» Snark: a nasty, knowing strain of abuse that spreads like pinkeye through the national conversation, schoolyard taunts without the schoolyard... more» When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, many Britons thought it was the beginning of the end of their empire. Still, it took a while... more» Life’s modest pleasures: walking, cooking, fishing, napping, sitting in silence, and enjoying chocolate. All are legal... more» Kafkaesque: the nonchalant intrusion of the bizarre and horrible into everyday life, the subjection of ordinary people to an inscrutable fate... more» How would William Randolph Hearst have reacted to the rise of the Internet? He knew war and politics would still make or break a news company... more» Even with aesthetic tastes, we are like our ancient ancestors in sharing a love of communion with others through art. Our art instinct is theirs... more» Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed was written for those who, like the author, were committed both to faith and reason... more» Arthur Miller�s answer to Joe McCarthy, The Crucible, compared him to a 17th-century witch hunter. But communists were not witches, they were real... more» Disraeli, with his olive complexion and coal black eyes, was an English Jew at a time when being English and Jewish was inconceivable... more» Charles Ives disparaged “sissy” musicians and bewailed the feminization of American musical life. He was a hard case... more» The Great Books of the Western World were icons of unreadability: 32,000 pages of tiny, double-column, eye-straining type. But oh, did they sell... more» It was a historical cataclysm carried out on an unimaginable scale. Stalin�s regime devoured not just human lives but hopes, dreams, trust... more» Leopold Bloom: son, father, lover, friend, warrior, man at arms – ordinary, yet a �complete human being.� Everyman for Modernism, says Peter Gay... more» Giordano Bruno was a martyr, but to what? He was both too late and too early to paint a universe in which man was not the center of a cozy domain... more» Awful modernist art can be easily ignored. But disagreeable architecture – concrete fa�ades on a human-repelling scale – is much harder to avoid... more» Charlie Chaplin loved scenes where a beautiful young mother is torn away from her terrified, weeping child. It was about his life... more» Abd al-Rahman’s Muslim Iberia was much advanced over Western Christendom in 800. If Charles Martel had lost at Poitiers, the world would be better off... more» Victor Gruen, Jewish socialist refugee from Vienna and father of the shopping mall, a man who changed the American way of life... more» We live in a maniacally fast and busy world. Do we wish to continue our detachment from the cycles of the sun and moon and tides and planets?... more» The dark side of the human animal is not wolf-like, as Hobbes suggested, it is ape-like. The wolf is a noble beast... more» Congolese, French, Spanish, Houma, and Haitian peoples make the story of New Orleans a tale that stands for the entire New World... more» Iceland�s epic poems turn an implacably cold gaze on human brutality, nobility, pettiness, glory and misery. Halld�r Laxness lived in this tradition... more» “I am alive ... I am beautiful ... what else is there?” Susan Sontag’s journals reveal much about her anxieties and passions... more» Between margin scribbles, the selection itself, and even a hair tucked between pages, Hitler’s personal library brings us creepily closer to the man... more» “The knell of private property sounds,” wrote Karl Marx. ”The expropriators are being expropriated.” Hardly. Look at the Bolsheviks... more» How odd that so many physicians write so well. From Anton Chekhov to Somerset Maugham to William Carlos Williams – to Theodore Dalrymple... more» Rupert Murdoch is an idiot savant who instinctively mines human weakness. He knows people need to justify giving in to their lowest impulses... more» Pixies, sheilas, and dirtbags. If you go on a whizzer and get a tad squiffy (if not starkers) with cougar bait, then expect to be a little rumpty-tumpty the next day... more» She may have been a“half-witted canary” to Lytton Strachey, but Bloomsbury’s most brilliant mind, John Maynard Keynes, fell for her still... more» Is it possible to create art out of horror, the 9/11 disaster, for instance, without being exploitative and tasteless?... more» The Nobel prizes owe their historic place not to any special Scandinavian wisdom, but to the sheer size of the prize purses... more» James Joyce for most of us is black words on a white page, the pure spirit of the English language. But to hear his actual Dubliner’s voice... more» Nothing To Be Frightened Of is, it hardly need be said, an ironic title. Julian Barnes is in fact scared as hell of death... more» Our political order depends on modern science and its blessings, yet science also corrodes the kind of moral judgments democracy also requires... more» We can’t help feeling that we should be improved by reading Lionel Trilling, and this feeling itself is inevitably oppressive... more» Jennifer McLagan cooks with glorious, filthy rich fat, set off in her recipes against bitter greens, bright acids, and sharp-tasting herbs... more» The Soviet mentality is being reborn in Russia. It is a return not to the terror of the 1930s, but to the drab, oppressed life of the 1970s... more» Sarah Caldwell was formidable with a baton. She was also an artist so tragically blind to her own failings that she was never able to master them... more» Question: Why is there any evil at all in God’s creation? Answer: Because this is the best of all possible worlds. Not for you, not for me, but in the longest run... more» Slavoj �i�ek: philosopher whose comedy and hyperbole, whose allusions to movies and video games mask a descent into a pit of moral and intellectual squalor... more» Malcolm Gladwell: a walking Reader’s Digest 2.0 whose pop science anecdotes boil down to dumb, flattering, homespun homilies... more» “The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man,” Niall Ferguson says. It has taken us from poverty to the giddy heights of prosperity... more» American museums have their fair share of Rembrandts, Vermeers, Titians, El Grecos, and Raphaels. Yes, but it isn’t about what’s fair... more» Anti-intellectualism in presidential speeches is a serious problem because of the way it allows public discourse to be infected with demagoguery... more» Thirty years since the revolution in Iran, and young Iranians burrow tunnels under the walls the regime uses to isolate them from the West. Consider sex... more» Kingsley Amis lamented the English village pub, where drink and tobacco brought people together in ways that respected and overcame their shyness... more» He has told of the “barbarism” of African societies and has fixated on public defecation when writing about India. V.S. Naipaul wants to wound... more» Who can take sex addiction seriously as a problem? Isn’t it a bit like tennis addiction? Maybe so, but this is one impairment that does sell books... more» Adamantine, hard from the start, John Milton’s English poetry aspires to biblical Hebrew and, for good or ill, succeeds... more» Flying ducks hung on flocked wallpaper: what do the material possessions of working-class people of London tell us about them?... more» Paul Auster’s narrative voice is as hypnotic as that of the Ancient Mariner. Start one of his books and by page two you cannot choose but hear... more» Connoisseurs take serious interest in the high arts of painting, music, and literature. Why is great perfume not seen in the same class?... more» Overparenting. Conservatives fear we’re turning our kids into pampered ninnies (i.e., Democrats); liberals think we’re raising selfish robots (Republicans)... more» Did Proust anticipate the course of 20th-century American literature? Edmund Wilson thought so, and that Thornton Wilder’s novels were proof... more» Franz Kafka was sufferer and victim, the tormented subject of nightmares. But also a master of nightmares, even a connoisseur of them... more» “And move next to some gay people.” Richard Florida argues it is not weather that maketh a city, but arts and culture and good restaurants... more» That Britannica set was to sit in your home merely as a reference tool. Those forbidding Great Books, however, were actually meant to read... more» ... more» China may be ugly and soulless, but Paul Theroux retains a sickened fascination for India, a land that is trapped between hypermodernity and medievalism... more» The weird world of art. How do so many different views and kinds of art jell into a rough consensus about what art is in the first place?... more» Are atheists nastier than religious folk? Some believers seem to think so. But maybe they are the very ones who make atheists nasty... more» Ludwig Wittgenstein was an arresting mix of monk, mystic, and mechanic. His family home in childhood is best described as a madhouse... more» Mortimer Adler and the Great Books. Yes, it was all rather earnest. But with humane studies having fallen to theory and politics, nostalgia is justified... more» V.S. Naipaul has always been a sadist and a smell-smock and a coxcomb, and he’s always enjoyed it. But why does he so want us to know it?... more» Geoff Nicholson likes walking the streets and lanes of London. Sure, but how can he also enjoy to walk the car-glutted streets of Los Angeles?... more» Samuel de Champlain never learned to swim, yet shot American rapids in bark canoes and starting in 1599 crossed the Atlantic 27 times without losing a ship... more» “A monster that must be put back in its place”? Heavens, no. Finance is a mirror that shows mankind its true face, warts and all... more» If there was ever a man who fit Comte de Buffon’s idea of genius as the capacity for taking pains, it’s Charles M. Schulz... more» “Oh dear, oh dear, how I sometimes wish I were respectable and dead,” he wrote. Now Benjamin Britten is both... more» Samuel Adams burned letters the British might use against him. He wasn’t playing for the history books, he was trying to plot a revolution... more» Loneliness: more and more people in the U.S. and across the globe now live alone and say they have no close confidant... more» ... more» Silent muses: three women who suffered immensely because they were tied to three men of artistic genius – Cézanne, Monet, and Rodin... more» Travel writing has often been a form of escape. Not so with V.S. Naipaul, who wants only to transform experience into art... more» | |
Essays and OpinionThe relationship between movies and comics, though it may never be a marriage, will always be alive, mysterious and passionate as a romance... more» It’s a curious reversal in moralizing. Food was once a matter of personal taste. Now sex is a matter of taste, and food puts people in high moral dudgeon... more» No one competing for national office can afford to be on the wrong side of Americanism, a creed both immensely attractive and remarkably supple... more» Carl Orff may have despised the Nazis for their lack of aesthetic sensibility, but he kept his views to himself and did well in the Third Reich... more» “Culture – literature and the other arts – are functionally significant features of human evolution.” Joseph Carroll and other thinkers on the power of Darwin’s thought today... more» In the last years, the financial system created a fog so thick that even its captains could not navigate it. Like the rest of us, they fell for a kind of pseudo-objectivity... more» Samuel Huntington died a pariah among America’s intellectual elite. As Eric Kaufmann explains, this was because he was actually rather normal... more» A nation divided. You see, the yoga people simply can’t stand what lawn-chemical people represent, and vice versa... more» Organ donation, some argue, should be built on altruism, pure kindness to complete strangers. Lovely ideal, but what if it means people die for want of transplant organs?... more» Should you take the GRE as a way to ensure your future? What if you flub it? What if you don’t, but people think you’re just showing off? Michael B�rub� wonders... more» In the age of Barack Obama, a silent but fateful struggle for the soul of capitalism is being waged. Can the market system be made to serve us? Or will we serve it?... more» Parents ought to have the right to name their own kids, most of us would agree. But what if they want to call their baby boy “Adolf Hitler”?... more» The Ultimatum Game: what an eye-opener for economists. You never know what you’re going to get until you actually run the experiment... more» Religion and science do not conflict, says the National Academy of Sciences. But this lovely idea is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith... more» Che Guevara, steely and determined in his beret, is so cool. In fact, in Cuba he’s become the Ronald McDonald of the revolution... more» Being smart does not entail being able to make the right decisions. Rational behavior, getting on in life, can be beyond those even with the highest IQs... more» Bankers out of work might consider becoming chefs. But no Madoff types, please: cooking the books isn’t the right experience for cooking coq au vin... more» Even before the inauguration, Elizabeth Alexander was writing poetry that was already public in the worst sense: inauthentic, bureaucratic, rhetorical... more» As we all seek more connectivity, we lose our sense of a private self. We no longer hear the still, small voice that speaks only in silence... more» Google has been digitizing millions of books from major research libraries. What does this mean for the future of the book? Robert Darnton wonders... more» Graffiti artists in the Paris Metro rage at remote abstractions: corporations or governments. As for the palpable threat right there on the platform... more» He smashed the china, soiled sheets, sunbathed nude, and was either drunk or stoned. Arthur Rimbaud was an impossible house guest... more» Blogging emphasizes self-obsessed, angry point scoring over the reflective exchange of ideas. The Web needs a politics that is not all about “me”... more» Two decades after the fatwa on Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, Muslim fanatics have gained a new advantage: media self-censorship... more» Explorer Richard Burton found the Somalis a “fierce and turbulent race” in 1854. They still are. They are also eloquent poets... more» Puritans love disasters: they can emerge from their priest holes, wagging their fingers: “You are being punished for your immoral lifestyle”... more» For eight years, George W. Bush pulled the levers of government – sometimes frantically – never realizing they did not connect to the machinery... more» W.H. Auden, E.M. Forster, William Empson, and Philip Larkin: four men who lived and died by, with, and for the English language. Steven Isenberg had lunch with them all... more» Literacy, the most empowering achievement of our civilization, is to be replaced by a vague and ill-defined screen savvy. All in the name of progress... more» A solipsistic pursuit of happiness by people who live close to one another can, alas, result in conflict. Our egotism creates a hostile environment for us... more» The Internet is not like print. Google or YouTube alone can seriously impede on the free flow of ideas. It’s not your father’s censorship... more» Lines like Milton’s, “Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live,” make the Scots bristle. That damnable English sense of superiority... more» Solving the world’s problems may require both scientific and religious attitudes, argues Frederick Grinnell: two different types of faith, not just the one or the other... more» There remains a place for morality in world affairs, but what of civilization, and its step-child, imperialism. Mark Mazower meditates on a fraught relationship... more» Do you suffer from blogaholism, Twitteritis, RSS Dependency, or Status Update Disorder? Then Polly Frost has the seminar for you... more» Whence the fear and contempt in modern art of such qualities as beauty and tenderness towards the world? How about our inflamed egotism?... more» The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has not stopped big nations from holding nukes. It has only killed off the protest against nuclear weapons themselves... more» Materialism, consumerism, owning things, is bad. Self-denial is good. So if I limit what I own to 100 objects, are my shoes one thing or two?... more» If sociologists ignore the genetic components of human behavior and sociality, will other academics – and the wider world – ignore sociology?... more» Time was when a responsible person in the West was someone who entertained firm moral and political principles. But is moral relativism defensible as a principle?... more» Printing – electricity – radio – antibiotics: after them, nothing was the same. Intellectual impresario John Brockman asks a select group of thinkers, “What will change everything?”... more» Time is the stuff of music: it plays with the rhythm of experience. If the world of physics is a space-time continuum, music is a pitch-time continuum... more» Last June, one expert told the public that the art market only goes up: �For the first time since 1914, we are in a non-cyclical market.� Tulips, anyone?... more» Germans don’t always find it easy to come to terms with their past. The Nazis come to mind, of course, but there is also the Baader-Meinhof gang... more» What made Harold Pinter a fine dramatist – free association, unreliable recollections, non-sequiturs – also made him a bad political activist... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» Africa needs Christianity, says atheist Matthew Parris. Alternatives leave Africans at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, witch doctors, mobile phones, and machetes... more» If a persuasive argument for the existence of God is wanted, then it looks like philosophy has come up empty. Of course, the devout were not exactly holding their collective breath... more» Do Jews control Hollywood? Could be. But Joel Stein wants a positive spin. Maybe, “Hollywood: now more Jews than ever!” or “Hollywood, from the people who brought you the Bible”... more» Academics, intellectuals, and skeptics prefer to think of themselves as hard to fool. Certainly not by the likes of Bernard Madoff. That’s why Stephen Greenspan’s account is so riveting... more» Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and may you have a joyous Kwanzaa! Hey, wait a minute. What happened to Kwanzaa? Kwanzaa isn’t over, is it?... more» Is Plato’s cave allegory about ascent of the soul? The true perception of the forms? Proper education? Maybe it’s about travel... more» Lord Keynes was an Aristotelian, who believed that vices are virtues carried to excess. This is a good economic philosophy for us today, says Robert Skidelsky... more» Andr� Bernard senses a sad, vague shift in the cultural landscape: the quirky, creaky business which produces that most desirable and perfect of objects – the book – is perishing... more» Darwinian science does not offer easy answers to all the pressing social questions of the day. But evolution gives social science a new start... more» Literary prize-fighting. The sniping, the joke awards, the populist panels: Tom Chatfield looks at the tired landscape of literary prizes... more» Nobody knows why we respond to music with such deep emotions, though theories abound. Mental cheesecake? Sexual display? Intensified natural sounds?... more» The U.S. has its financial problems, but it is much too early to conclude that the American century is finished, or that China solo is about to take over... more» Appearing to be sick is not a goal chosen by an hysteric so much as it is one gradually assumed, indeed, learned. The symptoms change with the culture... more» Most liberals once defended Salman Rushdie�s right to publish The Satanic Verses, despite offense to Muslims. Today, many would rather appease religious sensibilities... more» Literary studies force students to see works of fiction from the point of view that got their teachers tenure. But it’s the books that ought to be central, not the professor... more» High heels have never been higher and say much about sex, style, and politics. Germaine Greer asks if extreme shoes empower or constrain women... more» David Foster Wallace’s fevered writing was often witness to the agony of cognition: how the twists and turns of thought hold both the best promise of truth and worst threats to it... more» Beethoven had the classic prodigy’s trouble. He knew all about music, but didn’t know how to live and had only a hazy sense of the reality of other people... more» We need literary prophets and social critics – but also intellectual mystics, agnostic gnostics, and neuro-Buddhists. Try Aldous Huxley... more» When you have a bubble, you will get a crash. Very easy to say, very hard for equity traders to fully understand. Virginia Postrel explains... more» Teasing should not be banned in schools: kids gain with it a more complex, sophisticated, and ironic grasp of the human world. This is a social good... more» In social networks, happy and unhappy people tend to cluster separately. Each added happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%... more» “You loser!” screamed Katie, a toxic wife. “You’ve destroyed my life – just look at my hair, look at my nails! You loser, you jerk, you nobody”... more» Toy train sets, tools of childhood fantasy, had their most powerful influence before the 1950s. Yet they live again in an astonishing botanic metropolis... more» Parallels between our troubles today and the Great Depression are apparent. Did Lord Keynes have the solution to the problems then? Might his ideas work today?... more» “I only swear,” says Clive James, “because I ran out of ideas for saying the same thing better.” This applies to comedians as well... more» The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything, says Defense Secretary Robert Gates... more» She came to England to escape the Nazis, and at first appreciated her new home. By the end of her life she found the British rude, dishonest, and charmless. Why?... more» David Foster Wallace believed that each of us is marooned inside our own skull and that it is fiction�s job to �aggravate this sense of entrapment.� He was good at it... more» ... more» The heroes of Mumbai. Many Indians acted with sublime courage during the terror. Michael Pollack has a harrowing but inspiring story to tell... more» There were many other heroes as well. Barack Obama is not America’s first black president. He is the country’s first biracial, bicultural president. This is a big difference, as Marie Arana explains... more» Mumbai is a mass dream of the peoples of South Asia. It means money, freedom, flashy cars and flashier women. That is why they hate it... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» Hitler and sex. The fixation on Hitler’s sexuality, on his alleged perversity, is the very apex of cultural stupidity. Ron Rosenbaum explains why... more» Anthropology is at war with itself, split into two schools: social anthropologists on one side, evolutionary anthropologists on the other... more» “We won’t need a guidebook,” he said, with an affected nonchalance. “These are look-and-do mountains.” But they weren’t, not in the least... more» The Dragon Well Manor restaurant in Hangzhou offers guests a kind of prelapsarian Chinese cuisine in this age of industry, food scares, and pollution... more» On Facebook, John McCain was a silly old geezer out of his depth in an alien milieu. But for people of any age, how serious are Facebook “friends”?... more» So many assumptions, agendas and, distinctly iffy data behind those ubiquitous words, “research shows.” Frank Furedi explains a few of them... more» Research shows use of the word “went” declined by 32% in the NYC press since 2000. Bad economy? Global warming? Are people just going less in the past tense? It’s really ironic... more» King Lear is one of the darkest plays ever, yet Edgar, Kent, and Cordelia show a miraculous, almost irrational fidelity: they repay brutal rejection with unwavering loyalty... more» A Wall Street firm pays an ignorant 24-year-old hundreds of thousands of dollars to give stock advice to grownups. That was in the 1980s. Michael Lewis is still watching Wall Street... more» Witch hunters in Africa lynch “thieves” who rob men of their masculinity. Many people’s grasp of economics is at the same level. The Edge economics course is a curative... more» ... Class no. 1 Scandal is permanent, frozen before us. Scandals metastasize, ramify, self-replicate, clogging cable news, the blogs, and the bookstores. Scandal everywhere... more» Magicians manipulate focus and intensity of human attention, controlling what we are aware of and when. Their illusions are useful for grasping neuroscience... more» Darwinian dating. We are all animals: manhood is alpha-style toughness and cool promiscuity. Woman are just as manipulative, calculating, and driven by self-interest... more» Onion editors think up the headline first, then write story to match: “California Courts To See What Else They Can Marry” or “Study Shows Bullies Enjoy Pain of Others”... more» Has our political life really changed very much since Shakespeare’s day? Maybe it has regressed back towards it, having moved away only for a century or two... more» Condoleezza Rice said that in the Middle East, the U.S. will do the cooking and the Europeans can do the dishes. Imagine how the French, so proud of their gastronomy, took that... more» Typically full of himself, brilliant, and taking some risks, Leonard Bernstein 22 years ago delivered a rambling late-night talk on terrorism and truth... more» Marc Chagall plundered his sexual experience for raw material. Maybe that’s why his artistic style changed every time he changed women... more» So when did public intellectuals start dying out? With the invention of the Web, or was it in the days of John Stuart Mill – or ancient Athens?... more» For decades, poetry has been a way of losing money for trade publishers. Then Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn became a hit. Why?... more» “We blew it.” A bitter P.J. O’Rourke looks back in remorse on the historic chance that conservatives have taken 28 years to squander... more» Books have an almost sacred quality: only to imagine someone ripping the pages out of a book or, worse, buring it, causes a shudder... more» Barack Obama’s win marks the third straight defeat of a candidate who served in Vietnam. Clinton beat two veterans of WWII. It’s the end of war-veteran politics... more» Barack Obama’s America: richer, smarter, less white... Daniel Finkelstein ... Louis Henry Gates Jr. ... Sara Hebel ... John McWhorter ... Laurence Tribe ... Elizabeth Wurtzel ... Frank Furedi ... Anne Applebaum ... Robert Fulford ... Richard Cohen ... Joel Kotkin ... Gerard Baker ... Brendan O’Neill ... Roger Cohen ... Michael Gerson ... Ward Connerly et al. ... John Dickerson ... Irwin Stelzer ... Maureen Dowd ... Shelby Steele ... Alan Wolfe ... David Brooks ... Dissent roundup Why do Fred Astaire’s old movies still shimmer with glamour and enchantment, why do so many still find that the sight of him casts a lovely lilting glow?... more» Was Percy Shelley a co-creator of Mary’s great story, Frankenstein? Co-opter of her genius, perhaps? Her Svengali, her Max Perkins, or merely a good copy editor?... more» George Bailey (James Stewart) saved his bank by explaining to fearful creditors that banking depends on faith in your neighbors. Think that might work today?... more» It has a familiar ring: excess speculation, political mischief, and financial disaster. Defaults multiplied, banks failed. Soon troubles spread beyond real estate. The year was 1836... more» The booboisie, idiots whose primitive emotions are those “of tabby-cats rather than of men,” are the very people who elect politicians H.L. Mencken felt he knew them well... more» The Medici Bank in the 15th century had tenuous cash reserves that were usually well below 10% of total assets. Lack of liquidity was an issue for banking from the start... more» Frankenstein. A late Faust myth, or an early mad scientist story? Proletariat running amok, or the id on the rampage? Maybe the perils a man trying to have a baby without a woman... more» “Anti-Semitism has no fixed pattern. It’s like a virus that changes,” says Bernard-Henri Lévy. It is forever trying to tie itself to more acceptable beliefs... more» Libertarianism is finished. The financial collapse proves that its ideology makes no sense, argues Jacob Weisberg... more» Oh, yeah? Richard Epstein has another view. Jose Miguel Vivanco and Daniel Wilkinson put out a report in Caracas last month showing how Hugo Chávez has undermined human rights in Venezuela. When they returned to their hotel ... more» The Torture Colony. In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds... more» Pope Pius XII suffered moral agonies over his failure to do more against the Nazis. He did much to help the Jews, but hardly with enough courage to be a candidate for sainthood... more» Britons abroad belch, vomit, copulate, litter, and barge their way through foreign lands, dressed like hookers and louts: overpaid, oversexed and over there... more» Term paper mill. Need $100 by Friday to keep the lights on? No sweat, if you’re a writer. Plenty of kids need ten pages on Hamlet by Thursday... more» Picasso’s staccato performance never missed a beat: squiggle, snatch, scrawl, grab, jot, pinch, doodle, filch. A woman turned into a goat... more» The Starbucks predictor: the more frappucinos to be had in a country, the more likely that it is now facing a depression. (Well, the McDonald’s theory didn’t work either)... more» Swearing, says Steven Pinker, is a kind of word magic. People believe that some words can corrupt the moral order (foul language advisory)... more» |
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