‘The Iron Lady’: The Margaret Thatcher Movie We Don’t Need ‘The Iron Lady’: The Margaret Thatcher Movie We Don’t Need
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...
Jan 4, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Laura Flanders
Anxious and Paralyzed: On Spahr, Gordon, Moschovakis and Ossip Anxious and Paralyzed: On Spahr, Gordon, Moschovakis and Ossip
Books by four poets about big modern systems whose results and failures seem inescapable.
Jan 4, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Burt
Black Candle Black Candle
Your girlish shoulders are for blushing, For blushing under whips, and in dawn’s raw ice to shine. Your child-like hands are for pushing, For pushing flatirons and feed sacks, and knotting twine. Your feet, infant-tender, are for tiptoeing, Tiptoeing through shattered glass, in the blood-tracked clay. And I, I am for you, a black candle burning, Like a black candle I am burning, and dare not pray. (translated from the Russian by Christian Wiman)
Jan 4, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Osip Mandelstam
Last Year’s Model: On Simon Reynolds Last Year’s Model: On Simon Reynolds
A critic of pop’s retro turn can’t shake his own strain of pop nostalgia.
Jan 4, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Sara Marcus
Extremely Extremely
Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Wim Wenders’s Pina.
Jan 4, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Is the World Really Safer Without the Soviet Union? Is the World Really Safer Without the Soviet Union?
Instead of a new era of democracy, disarmament and interdependence, we have had unchecked militarism and economic crisis.
Dec 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Mikhail S. Gorbachev
The Soviet Union’s Afterlife The Soviet Union’s Afterlife
Twenty years later, questions endure about how and why the nation abruptly dissolved.
Dec 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Stephen F. Cohen
Back in the USSR Back in the USSR
Ever since 1991, Russians have been looking to the Soviet past for comfort and pride.
Dec 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Vadim Nikitin
Disgrace: On Marc Hauser Disgrace: On Marc Hauser
A case of scientific misconduct at Harvard.
Dec 21, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Charles Gross
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Andrew Tabler’s In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria; Steven Cook’s The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square.
Dec 21, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Frederick Deknatel