The twentieth-century illustrator John Held, Jr., perhaps most famous for his depictions of the Jazz Age, was also a talented maker of imaginative maps. On his 1928 Map of Americana,…
“World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Iceberg,” reads a headline of the satirical newspaper The Onion’s coverage of the sinking of the Titanic. Other articles on the page include “Stewards Kindly Ask…
While lying in a coma for five weeks, his disjointed, crushed bones held together by metal screws, Robert Hughes was haunted by Goya. After reading his biography of the artist,…
Review provided by Soccer ABC. Over lunch with his father, a twenty something Gabriel García Márquez was discussing the difficulty many writers have in writing their memoirs when they can…
When the tenor of politics is inflamed, partisan bickering precludes historical perspective. As attacks and recriminations pile up, politicians and pundits focus on the contests at hand and resort to…
From time to time, magic and its modern practitioners still steal into the spotlight—even without counting the wily tricks of Sly Saddam, Baffling Bin Laden, or Presto the President. Sometimes…
Ha Jin’s new book, The Crazed, addresses a wide range of philosophical, moral, political, and historical issues, while maintaining a tight plot, lyrical style, and convincing, engaging characters. Jin uses…
In her second novel, The Autograph Man, Zadie Smith tells the story of a man infatuated with fame. Alex-Li Tandem is a collector of autographs, the timeless signatures of individuals…
The English writer and literary critic G. K. Chesterton once said, “A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But…
You can learn a lot about the gay gene discourse from the title of Robert Alan Brookey’s new book. Specifically, two things deserve note: “invention” as the recurring process by…
Peter Ibbetson