Nation Topics - Essays | The Nation

Perry Anderson's Spectrum journeys through the abstract worlds
of conservative and liberal intellectual thought, and leaves in its
trail insights on the substance and style of ideas.

Michael Kimmelman's The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa is a celebration of the intersection between art and life and the random genius of the unexpected.

In 1966 Valerie Solanas moved to New York City. At 30, she was already a woman with a difficult past. Growing up in New Jersey, she was molested by her father.

"This is a book written in the presence of music." So begins Geoffrey
O'Brien's sprawling memoir-cum-critical essay, and the reader is tempted
to ask: What book isn't?

Generations of Yale students share stories about special moments in Vincent Scully's courses on art and architecture.

John Berger, best known for the essay collection Ways of Seeing, is
not a timid writer. His oeuvre comprises novels, poems, criticism and
plays.

After his death in 1975 at the age of 70, Lionel Trilling underwent
something of an eclipse.

To my distress and perhaps to my delight, I order things in accordance with my passions.... I put in my pictures everything I like.

Has anyone read John Dennis? Irving Babbitt? Gorham Munson? Probably not, though they were considered important critics in their day.