Garbage and Gravitas Garbage and Gravitas
Ayn Rand was a melodramatist of the moral life: the battle is between the producer and the moochers, and it must end in life or death.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Corey Robin
Stories and Legends Stories and Legends
How Barack Obama has fashioned a personal and political identity by treating the history of the civil rights movement as a usable past.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Thomas J. Sugrue
Scoured Light Scoured Light
Nothing is simple in the poems of James Schuyler, not even the formal austerity of looking out a window.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
Talking On Against Time Talking On Against Time
Though a new four-volume compilation of Paris Review interviews is filled with riches, it is tailored to the tastes of a polite literary culture.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Scott Sherman
Talking On Against Time Talking On Against Time
Though a new four-volume compilation of Paris Review interviews is filled with riches, it is tailored to the tastes of a polite literary culture.
May 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Scott Sherman
The Sad Tale of Gordon Brown, Starting With
 the First Debate The Sad Tale of Gordon Brown, Starting With
 the First Debate
The man doesn't smile.
May 13, 2010 / Column / Calvin Trillin
In Our Orbit: What Was Lost In Our Orbit: What Was Lost
Kai Bird's Crossing Mandelbaum Gate is a meditation on the collective failure of Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile their histories of loss and victimhood.
May 12, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Frederick Deknatel
The Enhancement of the Senses The Enhancement of the Senses
In The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes lucidly charts how the Romantics were as transfixed by the failures of science as they were by its bright accomplishments.
May 12, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Paula Findlen
Mind the Enlightenment Mind the Enlightenment
Jonathan Israel's epic defense of "Radical Enlightenment" has the dogmatic ring of a profession of faith.
May 12, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn
On the Gulf Oil Spill On the Gulf Oil Spill
Enough to make you ill.
May 5, 2010 / Column / Calvin Trillin