Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline book by Richard Posner
Peter Ibbetson
The first task facing Richard Posner in Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline is to find a way to define the rather nebulous cultural niche he wishes to study. He…
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John Adams book by David McCullough
When David McCullough won the National Book Award in 1981 for Mornings on Horseback, his rendering of Theodore Roosevelt’s struggle to manhood, he said that his childhood in Pennsylvania amid…
Does America Need a Foreign Policy? book by Henry Kissinger
Even before the events of September 11, the world was by no means an unexciting place. Slobodan Milosevic was stirring up trouble in Eastern Europe. The European Union, meanwhile, was…
More, Now, Again book by Elizabeth Wurtzel
When Elizabeth Wurtzel was 27, she published the best-selling Prozac Nation, a memoir of her struggle with depression. On the cover was a picture of Wurtzel wearing a little dress,…
The Future of Life book by Edward O. Wilson
Environmentalism is a large-scale lesson in sacrifice. Each time conservationists compel us to grudgingly concede a patch of land to nature, we are losers to the earth, which we cherish…
Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White book by Frank H. Wu
It is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at Yale. I am attending one of the accompanying lectures when a graduate student comes up to me, an Asian American, and asks…
The Procedure book by Harry Mulisch
In the beginning, Harry Mulisch created The Procedure. And though it sounds much like a John Grisham paint-by-statutes legal thriller, it is something with infinitely greater ambition. Mulisch, author of…
Swift as Desire book by Laura Ezquivel
I was able to finish Laura Esquivel’s latest novel only because I loved her previous one, Like Water for Chocolate, a charming magical realist story about unsatisfied desires. Like Water…
Silence in October book by ens Christian Grondahl
The longing for emotional connection and the difficulty of transcending individuality are central themes of Silence in October. The narrator, a forty-four year-old art historian without a name, addresses feelings…
Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems book by Billy Collins
Billy Collins’ poetry has long been described as “accessible”—a term that has been used as both a compliment and a disparagement. There is no doubt that the simplicity of his…