Shelf Life Shelf Life
Edward Luttwack’’s The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Wertheim
Chicken Wire and Telephone Calls: On Robert Caro’s LBJ Chicken Wire and Telephone Calls: On Robert Caro’s LBJ
In The Passage of Power, Robert Caro shows that LBJ’s brilliance as a politician lay not in his idealism but his opportunism.
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney
I’m Nobody, Who Are You? On Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’ I’m Nobody, Who Are You? On Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’
If you get to the top, only to find that the voice hounding you with charges of inauthenticity is your own, what then?
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz
Republican Soul Searching Republican Soul Searching
We’re searching our souls and we’re wondering why We got beat so badly our rivals are gloating. It’s obvious now where our campaign went wrong: We should have prevented more people from voting.
Nov 14, 2012 / Column / Calvin Trillin
Oliver Stone’s ‘Untold History’ Oliver Stone’s ‘Untold History’
Missed opportunities, roads not taken—these are the central themes of Stone's new documentary.
Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Jon Wiener
The Noble and the Base: Poland and the Holocaust The Noble and the Base: Poland and the Holocaust
Can the two central images of Poland during World War II—a country of heroes and a country of collaborators—ever be combined?
Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / John Connelly
Democracy Democracy
(A Patriotic Hymn for Republicans) Despite the fact that incidents of in-person voter fraud in the United States are exceedingly rare, the GOP has used the issue to tighten election laws around the country. —News reports American children are all taught in school That voting’s democracy’s most vital tool. But in the wrong hands all that voting can bring A little too much of a very good thing. Yes, too many voters of darker complexion Can cause the wrong person to win an election. And college kids mostly are just in a phase That makes them left wing and supportive of gays. To us, each of them is a dangerous blighter Whose voting should wait till he’s older and whiter. So we put in laws we have reason to think Will mean that the strength of these voters will shrink. We shorten the hours, and ask for a lot Of picture IDs—more than anyone’s got. Their votes aren’t the votes that the framers intended. We only regret that the poll tax has ended. The voting we need in this land of the free Is voting by people with whom we agree.
Nov 8, 2012 / Column / Calvin Trillin
Can the Federal Reserve Help Prevent a Second Recession? Can the Federal Reserve Help Prevent a Second Recession?
Chairman Ben Bernanke, who’s been sounding the alarm, is attacked constantly by the right. He and his allies need support from a mostly silent left.
Nov 8, 2012 / Books & the Arts / William Greider
A Peculiar Revolt: On Marcus Rediker’s ‘The Amistad Rebellion’ A Peculiar Revolt: On Marcus Rediker’s ‘The Amistad Rebellion’
Public sympathies and political outcomes over the Amistad Africans drifted in opposite directions.
Nov 7, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Nicholas Guyatt
Totalitarianism, Famine and Us Totalitarianism, Famine and Us
Have histories of famines caused by totalitarianism become a distraction to the new politics of hunger?
Nov 7, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn