Books and Ideas

Marxism and Form Marxism and Form

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 idea...

Nov 22, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Stefan Collini

The Secret History of Rum The Secret History of Rum

Long before oil dominated geopolitics, rum was the original global commodity, tying Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Caribbean in a complex web of trade and credit. And Bacardi...

Nov 22, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Ian Williams

Succès de Scandale Succès de Scandale

American readers have long felt guilty about loving Lolita. As Vladimir Nabokov's nymphet heroine turns 50, Lila Azam Zanganeh traces the impact of a novel that has become both an ...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Lila Azam Zanganeh

The Tower of Babel The Tower of Babel

Jerome Charyn's Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel examines the life the revolutionary idealist murdered by Stalin in 1940 and explodes the literary myths that hav...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Lee Siegel

The Dying Animal The Dying Animal

Gabriel García Márquez's new novella begins as an autobiography, but the passion-filled story of an old man, mad with love and clinging to life, weaves Marquez's othe...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Michael Wood

Mystic River Mystic River

Amartya Sen's latest collection of essays explores the rich flow of various peoples in and out of India and how they shaped the politics and spirituality of the nation today.

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Tariq Ali

All About My Mother All About My Mother

The Caribbean island of Vieques is a fitting setting for Captain of the Sleepers, Cuban novelist Mayra Montero's engrossing story premised on violations of the dead.

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Kate Levin

Profane Illuminations Profane Illuminations

New biographies of Rousseau and Voltaire help us appreciate how very fragile the eighteenth century's great movement of ideas was, and how remarkable it is that the Enlightenment n...

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / David A. Bell

Don’t Criticize Me Don’t Criticize Me

Karl Rove and his Singing Slimemeisters riff You Go To My Head.

Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Calvin Trillin

Emile Capouya Emile Capouya

Emile Capouya, literary editor of The Nation from 1970-1976, was both a working man and an intellectual, who brought trade book publishing to European standards and lived to oppose...

Nov 17, 2005 / Ted Solotaroff

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