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
Oprah Learns Her Lesson Oprah Learns Her Lesson
Is this it? The end of the Oprah Book Club as we know it? It's Thursday, April 4, at approximately 3:45 pm. In less than twenty-four hours, virtually everyone in America will ...
May 2, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Kathy Rooney
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
The Days of May The Days of May
What date shall I assign to Chris Marker's magnum opus, A Grin Without a Cat? This rugged oak of an essay-film, whose gnarls trace the growth and withering of decades of leftis...
Apr 25, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
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
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
History in a Blur History in a Blur
It seems scarcely to have required a great philosophical mind to come up with the observation that each of us is the child of our times, but that thought must have been receive...
Apr 25, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
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 / Books & the Arts / Alexander Cockburn