Russian author Victor Pelevin’s first novel translated into English, Omon Ra, is an exuberant satire on Soviet Russia’s space exploration program. Omon Krivomazov – named by his policeman father after OMON, one of many special Soviet police forces charged with suppressing riots – […]
Isaiah Berlin’s The Crooked Timber Of Humanity
by on July 6, 2014
Isaiah Berlin has been on my reading list for over a year, but that list is long and he was quickly buried by further additions. And then I happened, by accident, on the Philosophy section of a local bookstore, and […]
Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee
by on July 6, 2014
In The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond wears many hats – historian, anthropologist, zoologist, environmentalist, evolutionary biologist and geographer – to tell the story of mankind, from our differentiation from other primates, characterized by the evolution of larger brains capable of making […]
Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam
by on June 30, 2014
At the center of Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam is Molly Lane, or rather her ghost. Molly was a journalist and bon vivant whose many lovers, not all of whom are on good terms, come together at her funeral. Among these are Vernon Halliday, […]
David Simon’s Homicide: Life On The Killing Streets
by on June 28, 2014
I continue to proselytize for The Wire, the HBO television show created by David Simon, long-time Baltimore journalist, and Ed Burns, long-time Baltimore homicide detective and school teacher. Beginning with Baltimore’s drug trade – its dealers and users, and the […]
Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem
by on June 25, 2014
Joan Didion will turn 80 later this year, a milestone that will mark nearly a half-century of journalism and cultural commentary that place her among the very best nonfiction writers of the 20th century. But longevity has its downsides. She […]
Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams
by on June 20, 2014
To her left forearm, Leslie Jamison has tattooed a quotation from the Roman playwright Terence: Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto – I am human: nothing human is alien to me. These words also function as the epigraph to […]
Daphne Patai & Noretta Koertge’s Professing Feminism
by on June 16, 2014
Noretta Koertge is a professor of history and philosophy at Indiana State University, and Daphne Patai is a professor of “Languages, Literatures and Cultures” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and sits on the board of F.IR.E. (the Foundation for […]
Thomas Sowell’s The Vision Of The Anointed
by on June 13, 2014
First, a confession: this was an angry purchase. From the impression given by the title alone, and a short blurb on the jacket, I knew that this book would function less as a stand-alone work of political philosophy and more […]
James Baldwin’s The Cross Of Redemption
by on May 30, 2014
There are many ways to begin talking about James Baldwin. He was a man of many talents, many friendships and many causes, whose life, begun in Harlem and obscurity, put him at the very forefront of 20th century America’s most difficult social and political […]
Colm Tóibín’s New Ways To Kill Your Mother
by on May 21, 2014
I spent this past Mother’s Day reading Colm Tóibín’s New Ways To Kill Your Mother, a book of biographical sketches of novelists, playwrights and poets highlighting some of their more troubling family relationships. I picked it up thinking that there was some […]
Charles Murray’s Coming Apart
by on May 9, 2014
Charles Murray is a political scientist best known for his Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (1984) and the book on intelligence that he co-authored with the late Richard Hernstein, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The […]
Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!
by on May 5, 2014
I first heard of Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! in 2012, when it was announced as a finalist for that year’s Pulitzer Prize, alongside David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. Inexplicably, and perhaps also inexcusably, no prize was awarded that year, but the […]
T.S. Eliot’s On Poetry And Poets
by on April 30, 2014
This is my second time through T.S. Eliot’s On Poetry And Poets, separated from my first reading by several years, and I’ve found my early antipathy to Eliot’s criticism – beginning with his pronouncement that Hamlet is an “artistic failure” – largely dissipated. As […]
Karl Kraus’ Half-Truths & One-And-A-Half Truths
by on April 28, 2014
Before Jonathan Franzen lent his literary celebrity to the resurrection of his reputation, Karl Kraus was widely unread (to use a Krausian construction) in the English-speaking world. The Austrian playwright, essayist and critic is notoriously difficult to translate – so much […]