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Nation Topics - Books and the Arts

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MoMA

In defiance of its mission to preserve important works, the Museum of Modern Art has decided to raze the Folk Art building.

Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink,  civil wars, Asif Ali Zardari

Ahmed Rashid’s gloomy, essential account of the divisive US-Pakistan alliance.

Portrait of Charlie Parker

The Whitney’s adventurous, awkward attempt to explore abstract art through the blues.

Nikolai Leskov’s The Enchanted Wandered and Other Stories; Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself

How music plagiarism ruined a composer’s career and literally drove him mad.

National Library of Israel, Rothschilds, Yad Hanadiv, Rafi Segal,

In Israel, an architectural competition and its winner have been sabotaged by the bad faith of its sponsors.

A history of how risk management profits from manufacturing new forms of uncertainty and insecurity.

The Book of My Lives, Aleksandar Hemon, Sarajevo, Radovan Karadzic,

How did everything a writer had known and loved come violently apart?

Blogs

As the Democrats hysterically reel away from heath care reform in the wake of Scott ("My daughters are available") Brown's win in Massachusetts, I'd like to suggest the sort of personnel change President Obama needs to make in order to recoup his populist mojo: fire Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and replace him with Conan O'Brien. Why? Because Conan clearly has a grasp of exactly what you should do when, after years of grueling effort, the Man jerks your chain just as you're on the brink of realizing a long-cherished goal.

January 21, 2010

Markese Bryant (aka Doo Dat), born and raised in East Oakland, knows firsthand the effects of pollution and poverty in local communities of color. Now he's a leader in the movement to build an inclusive green economy through campus organizing and community education.

January 19, 2010

Since my poker buddy John Heilemann was good enough to drop off a copy of his embargoed book,

 

January 12, 2010

It's easy to describe the readers I have in mind when I write my column in The Nation: the 185,000 Nation subscribers, who are mostly liberals, progressives and leftists of various sorts, college-educated, over thirty, up on the news. I know quite a few of these readers, and hear from them all the time. Beyond the magic subscription circle, there's the larger community of feminists, other journalists, and writers I admire, including a few dead ones in my head.

August 7, 2009

Is there something wrong with writing poems about writing poems? And if so, what? My friend Richard Howard was the first person who told me he didn't approve of that subject, but since he said it while saying nice things about a poem I had written on that very theme, I didn't take it as a blanket prohibition, just a personal preference. It turns out a lot of people share it.

August 5, 2009

Now for something completely different. This week I'm guest-blogging at The Best American Poetry. So much fun! I'll be putting up here what I wrote over there the day before.

August 3, 2009