From The New Yorker, This Old House: David Sedaris on living in a world of antiques. Understanding the Heart of Men: Is German auteur and art-house idol Werner Herzog going Hollywood? A review of The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty by Wilfrid Sheed. From Sign and Sight, Slovenian saga of beauty and cruelty: With his trilogy "Die Zugereisten," Lojze Kovacic bequethed a novel of the century to Slovenia. So, You Want To Be a Star? Leo Lerman's gossipy journals offer lessons on fame. Sleuth at Work: The strange case of Nancy Drew's self-confidence.
From Slate, Gunter Grass, Reconsidered What does Peeling the Onion reveal? Muse or Ruse? Our culture romanticizes the myth of artistic inspiration, perhaps because we'd like to think that some people have artistic gifts, and that great literature or beautiful music is more a question of luck than hard work. The Creative Self: Do you long to express yourself? Tips on how to start and maintain a creative life. Hypergraphia, a river of words: Is hypergraphia—the compulsive need to write—a gift or a curse? Were these the Two Gentlemen of Madrid? A new film suggests Shakespeare and Cervantes met in Spain and gave each other literary help. Trying times in Toontown: Facing the same pressures as newspapers and reporters, editorial cartoonists, usually ink-and-paper traditionalists, are dipping their brushes into the world of animated online punditry. A look at how political cartoonists are trying to come up with new forms suitable to the Internet age as newspapers drop them from their staff.
The Fantasy World of Ryan McGinley: Does photography's hot young thing deserve all the hype? Facial awareness: In the young republic of the 17th-century Netherlands, painters - and the surging new middle classes - reinvented the art of portraiture. A Python Grip on Handel: As a musical genre, oratorios — large-scale settings of biblical texts for chorus, soloists and orchestra — are hardly known for their comedy. When the saints go marchin' out: What Hurricane Katrina has done to the musicians from Preservation Hall. Local food is not necessarily virtuous: A review of Moveable Feasts: The Incredible Journeys of the Things We Eat by Sarah Murray. Do certain physiological traits make some wine critics better than others? Mike Steinberger examines the physiology of the oenophile (and part 2 and part 3). The wine industry's accelerating shift away from cork has dire economic and environmental consequences. To say nothing of lost romance.
A review of Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War Over Anonymous Sources by Norman Pearlstine. Through a glass darkly: Fifty years after his death, Malcolm Lowry remains an unsurpassed chronicler of humanity's lower depths. Blithe Spirit: A review of Being Shelley: The Poet’s Search for Himself by Ann Wroe. Alexander Nehemas on how the search for beauty will affect our moral character remains always unpredictable. Olympian ideals fall short when it comes to culture: Art struggles to match the intensity of sporting events. But what it does is illuminate the human condition in much more subtle and varied ways. Grand designs: The world’s great corporate headquarters are a history of architecture’s biggest ideas, written in stone, metal and glass. But the corporate HQ is today an endangered architectural typology.
From The Toronto Star, a review of Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People by Roy MacGregor. "Canadian": It may be just one word, but it houses a multitude of ideas. On our nation’s birthday, we decode the ones that define our collective identity; Canadianism, A-Z(ed): To be a citizen of this country means to belong to a secular religion with its own rituals, apostates and articles of faith and they need to pay: Call for reparations in Canada being met with silence and refusal. From National Post, is Canada governable? Andrew Coyne investigates. From The Ottawa Citizen, a great tossed salad of humanity: Is multiculturalism working? That depends on what kind of multiculturalism you mean.
From Enter Stage Right, a series of articles on the Tory tradition in Canada from the 1980s to today (in 6 parts). From The Globe and Mail, a review of Intent for a Nation by Michael Byers; Canada's Young Activists: A Generation Stands Up for Change; and Great Questions of Canada. A review of Holding the Bully's Coat Canada and the U.S. Empire by Linda McQuaig. Live in Ajax? You must like NASCAR, hockey and family trips to the U.S. No? Researchers claim they can pin down your tastes, values and buying habits according to your postal code. Why is T.O. the capital of Facebook? Toronto claims more members of the popular social networking site than any other city in the world and it's not just because we're geeks.
From The Washington Post, a president besieged and isolated, yet at ease: Bush, grasping for answers and fixated on Iraq, remains resolute (and more). From Political Affairs, Ball and Cheney: How the Vice President is dragging down the administration. Washington's Zelig: Vic Gold, a longtime confidant of the Bush and Cheney families, describes the dangerous influence of the vice president. John Dean on The Misunderestimated Mr. Cheney: The Vice President's record of willfully violating the law, and wrongly claiming authority to do so. From the new magazine Taki's Top Drawer, an article on Bush & Cheney: It’s Time to Resign. Will President Bush pardon I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby? Everyone is wondering. But it is the wrong question. The right question is: Will he pardon anyone else?
From NYRB, can we know her? Michael Tomasky reviews A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Carl Bernstein and Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. McCain Drain: Here's how his struggling campaign could recover. An interview with Rudy Giuliani on his case to be Reagan's heir. Welcome back, 1912: An article on Bloomberg, Schwarzenegger and the dream of larger-than-life politics. A Political Force With Many Philosophies: A survey of independents, who could be key in 2008, finds attitudes from partisan to apathetic.
Undercover, under fire: Ken Silverstein on why the Washington press corps is too busy cozying up to the people it covers to get at the truth. A new report by the Center for American Progress and the Free Press has the right up-in-arms. Its message: right-wingers' dominance of talkradio is a classic market failure. Glenn Greenwald interviews Helen Thomas. Jay Rosen on how printing press progressives at Mother Jones try to debunk the political Web.
From National Journal, In Praise Of Imperfect Democracy: America's system of government labors under colossal inefficiencies. But what it never does, even at its worst, is express naked contempt for the opinions of its citizens. 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. Government by the worst, kakistocracy, is that wrong track this country is on. Mass political withdrawal: People have felt less and less interested in politics as government retreated from the quality and quantity of basic services it had provided them.
From TAP, The Most Activist Court: How progressives should think about and respond to the assaults of the Roberts Court; and Scalia and Thomas, originalist sinners: How Thursday's ruling on school integration gives the lie to the two justices' supposedly devout "originalism". Under John Roberts, Court Re-Rights Itself: This term at the Supreme Court was a nearly unmitigated disaster for progressives. Can neuroscience save the Democrats? More and more of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.
Drew Westen on The Rise and Fall of Immigration Reform: Speaking the right language about people who don't speak our language. From American, an article on how Mexican immigration will solve itself. What are we going to do if an American state speaks Spanish as their primary language? It's a question worth thinking about ahead of time. American by Choice: We must all learn what it means to be an American. How immigrants improve the curve: In the clash of civilizations, newcomers may deserve to come out on top. The Founding Immigrants: Anti-immigrant sentiment is older than America itself. Use Social Security to Seal the Border: The Social Security database, combined with laws already on the books, provides a way to catch unauthorized workers almost as soon as they are hired.
From The Nation, the superrich are buying up all the beautiful places in America, Barbara Ehrenreich writes, squeezing out the middle class and the poor. What's left for you and me? On MLS.ca, a million bucks ain't what it was: The new benchmark of envy is $10 million in a market gone mad. In Defense of the Sellout: A review of The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America by Daniel Brook.
From Business Week, The Europeans Do It Right: A whole continent shutting down for a month. The only way we can really shut down and enjoy time off is with our colleagues' help. Determining Who’s Gotten Satisfaction: In the case of the $54 million pants, just what did “satisfaction guaranteed” really mean? Michael Moore's newest film Sicko is less partisan, less outrageous—but more real—than anything he's done before. Lenin, Brecht and Michael Moore: Moore's new movie Sicko has opened across America. It's a given that the right hates him. But why do some allies fear he might do more harm than good? Death-wish granny: A lifelong member of the Hemlock Society, an 87-year-old grandmother is frail, housebound, nearly blind — and ready to die. Why won't anyone let her?
A new issue of Economic Sociology is out, including Karin Knorr Cetina (Chicago): Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Finance: Four Distinctions, Two Developments, One Field?; Brooke Harrington (Brown): Capital and Community: Findings from the American Investment Craze of the 1990s; an interview with Viviana Zelizer, author of The Purchase of Intimacy; and a review of Trust: Reason, Routine, Reflexivity by Guido Möllering. Yes, money talks – but sometimes nobody’s listening: Chris Dillow argues that there’s more to incentives than simple selfishness.
A review of "The Origins of Europe With the Greek Discovery of the World" by Klaus Held. A review of Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece by Joan Breton Connelly. A review of Historiography at the End of the Republic: Provincial Perspectives on Roman Rule by Liv Mariah Yarrow. A review of Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea by Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams. A review of Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King (and more). A review of God's Judgments, Interpreting History and the Christian Faith by Steven J. Keillor.
From Discover, a look at 20 things you didn’t know about Galileo. We are meant to be here: An interview with Paul Davies, author of Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life. Universe mostly forgets its past during cosmic rebirth: A new study suggests that with each big bang, the universe mostly forgets its past and starts anew. From Psychology Today, 10 Non-PC Truths About Human Nature: Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive; and a more organic take on human nature is emerging. It sees behavior as a product of distinct personality traits that we all have to a greater or lesser degree. In this new view, we're all just a little bit crazy.
A review of Bart Giamatti: A Profile by Robert P. Moncreiff. How did the eight so-called "Ivy League" schools – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell and Dartmouth – go from being training grounds for Christian missionaries and ministers and respected citadels of higher education to what they are now – propaganda factories for every leftist, perverted, radical, tyrannical, failed ideology known to mankind? A review of Stephen L. Carter's latest venture into academia, race — and murder, New England White.
From Writ, the Supreme Court's split over public school integration: Who really betrayed Brown's legacy? The Battle Over Brown: How conservatives appropriated Brown v. Board of Education; and How To Keep Brown Alive: Use income level, instead of race, to integrate the schools. Can a law change a society? Last week’s Supreme Court decision declared that public schools can’t take explicit account of race to achieve integration, but will a colorblindness mandate succeed? Benjamin Wittes on how Anthony Kennedy punts on the question of school diversity.