Coming of Age in Venezuela Coming of Age in Venezuela
A few years back, critics of postmodernism, both left and right, chuckled at the academic sting pulled on the journal Social Text when it published Alan Sokal's bogus article on ...
Nov 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Greg Grandin
Riding the Third Wave Riding the Third Wave
I have been waiting for Manifesta to come out. I had certain hopes for this book. In particular, I was looking forward to using it as a corrective addition in a course I'm teachi...
Nov 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Michelle Jensen
On Shooting at Elephants On Shooting at Elephants
They laughed when I sat down with these two writers--and never mind that both books arrived in the same box. The bad gay boy and the cold war saint! The apostle of derangement an...
Nov 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / John Leonard
Liberalism: In Search Of Liberalism: In Search Of
A half-century after the appearance of The Vital Center, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s spirited political polemic, we have more than sufficient cause to meditate on what might be called...
Nov 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Paul Buhle
Our Books, Ourselves Our Books, Ourselves
"Simone de Beauvoir said 'Books saved my life.' I think that's true for me," announced Gloria Whelan in accepting her National Book Award recently for Homeless Bird (which won fo...
Nov 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Art Winslow
After the Renaissance After the Renaissance
A quarter-million people thronged Abraham Lincoln's Memorial that day. In the sweltering August humidity, executive secretary Roy Wilkins gravely announced that Dr. William Edwar...
Nov 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Kevin Brown
Clipping the Yankee Clipper Clipping the Yankee Clipper
The twentieth century produced few American heroes like Joe DiMaggio. He was arguably the best all-around ballplayer who'd ever taken the field, a unique combination of power, sp...
Nov 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Peter Schrag
What Is What Was? What Is What Was?
In the Acknowledgments section of his biography of Saul Bellow, James Atlas quotes a somewhat greater biographer, Samuel Johnson: "We know how few can portray a living acquaintan...
Nov 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Richard Stern
The Martian Chronicles The Martian Chronicles
Long before Carrie-Anne Moss rips open Val Kilmer's shirt and begins pounding his chest, providing him with a version of CPR that she must have learned from a Japanese drum troup...
Nov 16, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Remembering Ring Remembering Ring
The quiet grace of Ring Lardner Jr., who died the other week at 85, seemed at odds with these noisy, thumping times. I cannot imagine Ring playing Oprah or composing one of those...
Nov 16, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Roger Kahn