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November 26, 2009
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Claire Wasserman on Europe’s Islamic Immigrants

Christopher Caldwell explores in his recent book what he terms Islam’s “adversary culture” now challenging Europe’s own sense of historical identity.

Posted on Nov 20, 2009 24 COMMENTS


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Marc Cooper on the Fate of Cesar Chavez’s Dream

In her important new book, Miriam Pawel chronicles how a movement to unionize farmworkers failed to realize its charismatic founder’s vision as his relatives turned a union into a family business.

Posted on Nov 13, 2009 34 COMMENTS


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D.J. Waldie on the Cult of Baseball

“The Opposite Field,” a memoir by Jesse Katz, is a moving meditation about baseball, politics, and the unease of negotiating a new kind of American place.

Posted on Oct 30, 2009 4 COMMENTS


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Jonathan Kirsch on ‘The Woman Who Named God’

Is the biblical tale of Hagar “a creation story as important as the Garden of Eden,” as Charlotte Gordon argues in her provocative new book?

Posted on Oct 23, 2009 138 COMMENTS


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Michael Kazin on Dorothea Lange and the Great Depression

Two new books explore the cultural achievements of the 1930s that continue to shape the American imagination.

Posted on Oct 16, 2009 61 COMMENTS


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Tracy Quan on Class Anxieties

Julian Fellowes’ novel “Past Imperfect” provides a compelling fictive crossroads where the myths and realities of class collide.

Posted on Oct 2, 2009 9 COMMENTS


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Eve Pell on Old Money and Its Discontents

Tad Friend’s vivid memoir offers an insider’s guide to the peculiar anthropological habits of America’s now nearly extinct WASP ruling establishment.

Posted on Sep 25, 2009 3 COMMENTS


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Joel Kotkin on California’s Golden Age

Kevin Starr’s newest volume in his magisterial series on California examines the dream of endless prosperity that was, for a time, synonymous with the American dream.

Posted on Sep 18, 2009 12 COMMENTS


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Benjamin R. Barber on Alan Wolfe’s ‘The Future of Liberalism’

Can liberalism be rescued from those who equate it with treason, terrorism, evil and even a mental disorder?

Posted on Sep 11, 2009 30 COMMENTS


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Steve Oney on John Buntin’s ‘L.A. Noir’

A rare combination of bravura storytelling and social history, “L.A. Noir” will delight fans of hard-boiled film and fiction even as it challenges the myths of 20th century Los Angeles.

Posted on Sep 4, 2009 3 COMMENTS


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Eric Lax on Elia Kazan

Whatever one thinks of his politics, Elia Kazan was inarguably one of the 20th century’s greatest Broadway and Hollywood directors. A new book reveals the master at work.

Posted on Aug 28, 2009 13 COMMENTS


Losing the News

Chris Hedges on Alex S. Jones’ ‘Losing the News’

Are we entering an age in which the electronic image, endowed with the ability to manufacture its own reality, is hurling us into a state of collective self-delusion? Welcome to a brave new post-literate world where we confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge.

Posted on Aug 13, 2009 75 COMMENTS



Richard Flacks on Pete Seeger

Now 90 years old, America’s exemplary troubadour continues his lifelong project to agitate and organize through song, fulfilling his father’s dictum that “Music, as any art, is not an end in itself, but is a means for achieving larger ends.”

Posted on Aug 7, 2009 25 COMMENTS



Frederic Raphael on Socrates

Was Socrates an atheist, a guru to a strange sect and an elitist corrupting the youth of a democratic Athens defeated in the Peloponnesian War, as his accusers successfully charged? A new book by Robin Waterfield seeks to dispel the myths about “Why Socrates Died.”

Posted on Jul 31, 2009 22 COMMENTS



Larry Blumenfeld on New Orleans After Katrina

Why are New Orleanians—along with people from all over the world who continue to flock there—so devoted to a place that was, even before the storm, the most corrupt, impoverished and violent corner of America? “Nine Lives” by Dan Baum helps provide an answer.

Posted on Jul 24, 2009 10 COMMENTS



Warren I. Cohen on Obama’s Foreign Policy Challenges

The daunting problems Bush’s successor has inherited may prove all but insurmountable as he makes his way through a thicket of difficulties—the nuclear ambitions of authoritarian regimes, the quagmire of Mesopotamia and the persistent bloodletting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to name only the most prominent. A recent book by David E. Sanger, a longtime foreign affairs correspondent for The New York Times, offers a close-up look at the world Obama confronts.

Posted on Jul 17, 2009 7 COMMENTS


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Jane Ciabattari on the Delights of the Rural Life

Is the pastoral arcadia of the country life far from derivatives and emissions and the other excreta of our modern cities all that it’s cracked up to be? Two new memoirs give readers who don’t want to stir from their armchairs to take up farming an insider’s look.

Posted on Jul 10, 2009 36 COMMENTS


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Mark A. Fischer on Joe Torre

Just how important is a baseball team’s manager to how well a team performs? A new book by one of baseball’s giants attempts an answer. You be the judge.

Posted on Jul 3, 2009 6 COMMENTS


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Danny Goldberg on the Digital Music Revolution

Is there a social consequence to the increasing numbers of consumers who expect to get information and entertainment for nothing? Can there be too much of a good thing? “Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age” by Steve Knopper provides a useful autopsy.

Posted on Jun 26, 2009 36 COMMENTS


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Troy Jollimore on God’s Evolution

Can Robert Wright, the acclaimed author of “The Moral Animal,” square the circle in his new book on the persistent and vexing issue of what role religion plays in how human societies seek to comport themselves? Just how crucial to our modern ethical ideas like universal rights and equality among all persons is the notion of a single, all-powerful god?

Posted on Jun 19, 2009 50 COMMENTS



Megan Hustad on Class in America

Two memoirs—Eve Pell’s “We Used to Own the Bronx” and Christopher Buckley’s “Losing Mum and Pup”—demonstrate, each in its own way, that all that glitters is not gold and that the price exacted by extreme social anxiety is very high indeed. A feast of the higher gossip and raw meat for social anthropologists.

Posted on Jun 12, 2009 18 COMMENTS


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Susie Linfield on How to Think About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

A provocative new book, “One State, Two States,” by revisionist Israeli historian Benny Morris breaks a taboo by asking whether anti-Zionism has become the anti-imperialism of fools. Can his polemic act as the ax that helps break up the frozen and brittle nature of a debate over the seemingly intractable war between Palestinians and Jews?

Posted on Jun 5, 2009 92 COMMENTS


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Mark Dowie on I.F. Stone

Critic and crusader, the late I.F. Stone was an American original. Neither changing times nor his failing eyesight blunted his radical edge or dimmed his acerbic wit. A new biography by D.D. Guttenplan gives us the man behind the legendary muckraker.

Posted on May 29, 2009 14 COMMENTS


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Allen Barra on Cornelius Vanderbilt

A new and outrageously entertaining biography of America’s first tycoon by T.J. Stiles, one of our best younger historians, sheds new light on the monumental life of what Stiles rightly calls “an instinctive predator” and his mixed and enduring legacy.

Posted on May 22, 2009 3 COMMENTS


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Chalmers Johnson on the Cost of Empire

Why does the U.S. government maintain over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees in 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories? How long can the American taxpayer support this far-flung force given the severely weakened economy? And why has there been no public discussion by the Obama administration over scaling back our imperial presence abroad?

Posted on May 15, 2009 66 COMMENTS


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A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
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