culture September 29, 2016

In 'Hitler,' an Ascent From ‘Dunderhead’ to Demagogue

How did Adolf Hitler—described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a “half-insane rascal,” a “pathetic dunderhead,” a “nowhere fool,” a “big mouth”—rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this “most unlikely pretender to high state office” achieve absolute power in a once democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?

culture July 18, 2013

The Cuckoo's Calling

The detective novel The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith — who was unmasked a few days ago as a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame — doesn’t provide the reader with many clues to its author’s real identity. There are no wizards, witches or dementors in this novel; no magic or sorcery in its plot. Instead, the book is set in an all-Muggles London and features a disheveled, Columbo-esque detective named Cormoran Strike who takes on a case that plunges him into a posh world of supermodels, rock stars, movie producers and social-climbing wives.

culture June 14, 2013

Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier

Google does it. Amazon does it. Walmart does it. And, as news reports last week made clear, the United States government does it. Does what? Uses “big data” analysis of the swelling flood of data that is being generated and stored about virtually every aspect of our lives to identify patterns of behavior and make correlations and predictive assessments. Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argue that big data analytics are revolutionizing the way we see and process the world — they even compare its consequences to those of the Gutenberg printing press. And in this volume they give readers

culture January 29, 2013

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne

“An old soul is the last thing you would expect to find inside Justin Bieber,” an old entry on his Web site says. “But all it takes is one listen to the 15-year-old soul-singing phenomenon to realize that he is light years ahead of his manufactured pop peers.” Mr. Bieber, now 18 and as big a pop star as ever, is the model for the 11-year-old with an old soul in Teddy Wayne’s sad-funny, sometimes cutting new novel, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine.

culture December 28, 2012

Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A reader could easily run out of adjectives to describe Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s new book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. The first ones that come to mind are: maddening, bold, repetitious, judgmental, intemperate, erudite, reductive, shrewd, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, provocative, pompous, penetrating, perspicacious and pretentious.

culture June 06, 2012

The Young Dreamer, With Eyes Wide Open

Barack Obama’s life, says his latest biographer, David Maraniss, was to an astonishing extent “the product of randomness.” His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, the only child of a couple from Kansas, met his father, Barack Hussein Obama, a student from Kenya, in an elementary Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, and the young Barry Obama would grow up in Hawaii and Indonesia, taking an odd, zigzagging and totally improbable road to the White House. And yet, Mr. Maraniss makes clear, despite the bewildering role that chance played in Mr. Obama’s story, he has been very much the author

Michiko Kakutani