Ghazal for Lauren Ghazal for Lauren
Sister, they say heed the hymn in your heart. You've learned you've an odd rhythm in your heart. You and I versus our brothers: pitched war. The four of us in the swim of your ...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Leslie Chang
Singing to Power Singing to Power
British folk-rocker Billy Bragg has to be the only popular musician who could score some airtime with a song about the global justice movement. The first single from Bragg's Engla...
May 29, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Hillary Frey
Grabitization (Don’t Look) Grabitization (Don’t Look)
Almost everything that is wrong with Washington Post foreign editor David Hoffman's new book about Russia's transformation into a capitalist system, The Oligarchs, can be discerne...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Matt Taibbi
Yaqui Way of Knowledge Yaqui Way of Knowledge
Although Chicano identity has been Luis Valdez's theme since all but the earliest years of El Teatro Campesino, the guerrilla theater he founded in the 1960s, getting a clear sens...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Hal Gelb
Sleepless in Nightmute Sleepless in Nightmute
You may recall Insomnia as a Norwegian film made on a modest budget--do I repeat myself?--about the inner life of a morally compromised police detective. The picture enjoyed a sma...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Custom Custom
There is a difference it used to make, seeing three swans in this versus four in that quadrant of sky. I am not imagining. It was very large, as its effects were. Declarations ...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Carl Phillips
Pursued by Love’s Demons Pursued by Love’s Demons
As if the back streets of our local city might dispense with their pyrrhic accumulation of dust and wineful tonality, offer a reprise of love itself, a careless love rendered g...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Charlie Smith
The Evolution of Darwinism The Evolution of Darwinism
Popular perception notwithstanding, the theory of natural selection was accepted by every serious evolutionist long before Darwin. Earlier scientists interpreted it as the cleares...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / David Hawkes
Patriotism’s Secret History Patriotism’s Secret History
Our most cherished national symbols—from the Pledge of Allegiance to "America the Beautiful" to Lady Liberty's poetry—are rooted in liberal ideals.
May 16, 2002 / Peter Dreier and Dick Flacks
The Band’s Long Waltz The Band’s Long Waltz
When I first saw The Last Waltz in 1978, I almost walked out, although I was a fan of both director Martin Scorsese and The Band. I admit I was one of the folks whose tickets for...
May 16, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Gene Santoro