The Great Societizer The Great Societizer
Reading Robert Caro to learn about Lyndon Johnson is like going to an elaborate buffet in order to get the four basic food groups; they both give you what you need along with much...
May 2, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Philip A. Klinkner
Melville at Sea Melville at Sea
In 1851, when the 32-year-old Herman Melville published his masterpiece Moby-Dick, he was already known as a man who'd consorted with cannibals. His first book, Typee: A Peep at P...
May 2, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Brenda Wineapple
In Our Orbit In Our Orbit
The Past Ahead of Us "History," wrote James Baldwin, "does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact...
May 2, 2002 / Books & the Arts / The Editors
Gayness Becomes You Gayness Becomes You
Nearly fifty years ago, in Eros and Civilization, Herbert Marcuse suggested that homosexuals (then the current term) might someday--because of their "rebellion against the subjuga...
May 2, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Martin Duberman
A ‘Thirst for the Divine’ A ‘Thirst for the Divine’
Charles Wright and Charles Simic count among the best poets of their generation. Each career has unfolded with considerable excitement for serious readers of contemporary poetry, ...
May 2, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Jay Parini
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
The Torturer’s Apprentice The Torturer’s Apprentice
Alan Dershowitz prides himself on his credentials as a civil libertarian, and to judge by most of the essays in his latest book, Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent A...
Apr 25, 2002 / Books & the Arts / William F. Schulz
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
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 / Books & the Arts / 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