An exhibit at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg is called Dvoe, or “Twosome.” It pairs paintings and sculptures to suggest dualities in Russian art: East vs. West, peasant vs.…
Today, the sound of the Motor City’s name most readily connotes the rap soundtrack of Eminem and the bleak visuals of 8 Mile. In the late 70’s, KISS anointed the…
In The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, Leon Kass looks at the first book of the Bible to find out just what makes it eternally relevant. He addresses especially the…
Despite the remarkable advances in medical knowledge made during the 20th century, the health of the world’s poor has rarely been in such jeopardy. The global AIDS epidemic constitutes the…
Don’t hate me for liking Hillary. She’s an easy target for cynics, not only for her political maneuvering but also for her anti-charisma: the way she contrasts with Bill in…
In the aftermath of the Lacedaemonian revolution, Thucydides writes, “Words had to change their meanings and take on those which were now given them.” Diane Ravitch’s Language Police explores the…
On a hot and sticky Saturday morning this August, a massive crowd—possibly even 10,000 people—gathered in Montgomery, Alabama to protest, praise, and pray. They had bussed in en masse from…
I’ll confess that I am a sappy romantic who enjoys watching teeny-bopper comedies despite their repetitive, unoriginal plots. I sometimes cave to the temptation of reading Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve…
Five years ago, the Los Angeles Public Library started a new line of posters, featuring a large picture of a library card, with the slogan “a sign of intelligent life…
Fiction was not a panacea,” Azar Nafisi writes late in Reading Lolita in Tehran, “but it did offer us a critical way of appraising and grasping the world—not just our…
Peter Ibbetson