Books and Ideas

Discovery/The Nation ’02 Prizewinners Discovery/The Nation ’02 Prizewinners

The Nation announces the winners of Discovery/ The Nation, the Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize. Now in its twenty-eighth year, it is an annual contest for poets whose work ha...

Apr 25, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Various Poets

Ghost Buster Ghost Buster

To immerse oneself in Robert Caro's heroic biographies is to come face to face with a shocking but unavoidable realization: Much of what we think we know about money, power and p...

Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman

Education of a Knife Education of a Knife

The third-year medical student held the intravenous catheter, poised to insert it into a patient's vein. Suddenly the patient asked, "Have you done this before?" As the student la...

Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Barron H. Lerner

Big Food’s Real Appetites Big Food’s Real Appetites

More than the much-reviled products of Big Tobacco, big helpings and Big Food constitute the number-one threat to America's children, especially when the fare is helpings of fats,...

Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Ian Williams

The Loneliest Road The Loneliest Road

Late in the evening in back-road America you tend to pick the motels with a few cars parked in front of the rooms. There's nothing less appealing than an empty courtyard, with ma...

Apr 18, 2002 / Beat the Devil / Alexander Cockburn

Sensation Sensation

A friend and I were sitting around commiserating about the things that get to us: unloading small indignities, comparing thorns. "So there I was," she said, "sitting on the bus a...

Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Patricia J. Williams

The Enemy The Enemy

The buildings' wounds are what I can't forget; though nothing could absorb my sense of loss, I stared into their blackness, what was not supposed to be there, billowing of soot...

Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Rafael Campo

American Dreams, Lost and Found American Dreams, Lost and Found

In this excerpt from his 2002 book, Studs Terkel recalls an encounter with Dennis Kucinich, "the boy-mayor of Cleveland," and follows his political odyssey.

Apr 18, 2002 / Feature / Studs Terkel

It’s Only a Beginning It’s Only a Beginning

Nearly four years have elapsed since that merry month of May when France and the whole world were taken aback by a sudden and momentous upheaval.

Apr 17, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer

The Undertaker’s Art, Exhumed The Undertaker’s Art, Exhumed

"It's a great mistake not to feel pleased when you have the chance," a rich, disfigured spinster advises a frail, well-mannered boy in The Shrimp and the Anemone, the first novel ...

Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Caleb Crain

x