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Nation Topics - Books and the Arts

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Nation Topics - Books and the Arts

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Photo of Napoleon Chagnon

One anthropologist’s place in his field’s ongoing battle over questions of power, means and ends.

Renata Adler, April 1975, Patmos, Greece, photograph by Richard Avedon

The slowly panic-making power of Renata Adler’s novels Speedboat and Pitch Dark.

Photo of Rabindranath Tagore, circa 1917

Why a passionate history of global alternatives to liberal capitalism becomes an exercise in nostalgia.

The neoconservative leading the fight over the legacy of Vatican II in the American Church.

photo of Frank Bidart

In Metaphysical Dog, a poet continues his unending, obsessive arguments with himself.

Cartoon, Screwing the World (1984), by David Levine

Victor Navasky’s The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and their Enduring Power

Blogs

Though complicated by controversy, a weekend in Los Angeles with thirty domestic workers underscores the power of Hollywood to propel social change. 

February 27, 2012

How does the movie The Help "photoshop" American history?

February 27, 2012

Whitney's death reminds us of a music industry that does not take care of its own.

February 13, 2012

Romney misattributed the key quote of his Florida victory speech to the pamphleteer. But that's hardly the only reason why Paine would have decried the Bain Capitalist.

February 1, 2012

In the new bio-pic, Margaret Thatcher's iron isn’t just rusty, it’s melted down into something soft and personal. The Iron Lady gives us Thatcher, the ABBA Version. It’s the last thing we need. 

January 4, 2012

Will the new president's mega-million-dollar makeover of the main library scare off scholars and leave the branches begging?

December 6, 2011

&ldquotLiberty Walk,” the one percenter teen sensation’s catchy, if repetitive, remixed single sets her music to laudatory images from OWS encampments throughout the nation.

November 29, 2011

Since every great protest movement needs its culture, here's my stab at a list of the ten best songs ever written about class and poverty in tribute to #OccupyWallStreet.

October 3, 2011

An incomplete list of ten of the best songs ever written about school.

September 9, 2011

In honor of Labor Day, here’s a stab at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people.

September 4, 2011
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