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Articles of NoteDuke Ellington’s charm, drive, and singular talent place him in the musical pantheon. A man of unshakable dignity... more» Finishing a book requires an author to make choices and foreclose possibilities. That is what Ralph Ellison was unable to do... more» Herman Simm seemed to deserve his Order of the White Star for service to Estonia. In truth, he was the most damaging spy in the history of NATO... more» You’re not likely to hear this from your doctor, but fake medical treatments can work amazingly well. Always did, always will... more» Whaling in the 19th century combined cruelty, greed, nobility, courage, and generosity – and still we say, “Thank God it’s gone”... more» The café of Hotel Castelar was the literary heart of Buenos Aires, visited by Lorca, Neruda, Borges. It’s coming back to life... more» ... New online: 1976 Jorge Luis Borges interview. Stefan Zweig, besides being one of the great authors of the 20th century, also brought together an astonishing collection of musical manuscripts... more» Years ago, Christopher Hitchens wrote in the New Statesman that he found the new Tory leader “sexy.” Some crimes can be forgiven, others not... more» Greece is only a start. Leading economies have long lived beyond their means. And now, ominously, the bill is coming due. Der Spiegel reports... more» The Underdog Effect. We think we prefer to see the weaker team win. But perhaps we are just kidding ourselves... more» When we rely on spies, Malcolm Gladwell reminds us, we rely on sources that can’t be trusted. “The next time a briefcase washes up onshore, don’t open it”... more» The idea that soap-opera viewers might be modeling themselves on characters in As the World Turns may seem appalling. Not to worry, says Drake Bennett... more» Like many people at Google, Franz Och sees himself as campaigning for freedom and equality. His aim: to open all the Web to non-English speakers... more» The Europeans can come off as smug do-gooders, and their latest problems may incite Schadenfreude. But the ideals of Europe are still there to be admired... more» Ortega y Gasset: “Culture is what remains after we’ve forgotten everything we’ve read.” And what, Sven Birkerts asks, is left after reading a novel?... more» Adam Smith’s great book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is a global manifesto for the interdependent world in which we live. Amartya Sen explains why... more» The U.S. and China are locked in a kind of mutually assured economic destruction that will force cooperation even as security disputes simmer... more» “The good mechanic knows how to take a car apart,” says Neil Simon. “I love to take the human mind apart and see how it works”... more» The idea that religions of the world are just varied paths that lead us to the same wisdom is comforting, sentimental bilge... more» Swashbuckling historical novels have long pleased the public and been derided by critics. Time perhaps for a serious second look at the genre.... more» Can you multitask? Of course you can – as many as two tasks at the same time! So can everybody else, the latest research shows... more» John Adams’s library had more than 3,000 books – Thucydides, Plutarch, Cicero. Jefferson’s collection was massive. Presidents have been big readers... more» Kindle, iPad, whatever. No matter where people buy books, they will regard something you can’t hold as worth less than something you can... more» Goldman Sachs is everywhere: a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money... more» The next empire. Across Africa, tracks are being laid, highways built, ports dredged. China, with its insatiable appetite for commodities... more» Fakelaki and rousfeti: two little words that together explain how Greece managed to tax so little and yet spend so much... more» Antony Flew, philosopher who changed his mind on the existence of God, is dead at age 87... NYT ... Guardian ... Telegraph ... London Times ... Christianity Today ... Wash Post ... Christian Post Does a “hot hand” basketball player who has just sunk six free throws in a row stand a better chance of sinking the seventh? Is that hand really hot?... more» The Chinese Communist Party is bleeding to death financially and politically and probably won’t last much longer. Gordon Chang explains why... more» The air-crash that decapitated Poland’s state elite may owe something to reckless behavior, official negligence, and flaws of modern democracy itself... more» The English breakfast: fat bangers, eggs oozing yolk, sizzling rashers, tea, double buttered toast. People feel good just thinking about it. Well, some people... more» The Jews of Europe had behaved badly, Raul Hilberg felt. Instead of fighting the Nazis, they had surrendered to them... more» Curious George ate bananas, had fun, and made a lot of mischief, but never actually saved the day, until 1939... more» Looking back over his life from St. Helena, it wasn’t the failed invasion of Russia that loomed large in Napoleon’s mind, but rather the Siege of Cádiz... more» Plagued by reports of dodgy data, sloppy work, and exaggeration, climate science is in crisis. And what if world temps rose by two degrees or more? Der Spiegel asks... more» What’s with Germany? Used to be that when the tab came, the Germans would pay for everybody’s drinks, not to mention their retirement... more» Emotions such as empathy and disgust may be at the root of morality, but people do change their moral views, with emotions falling in line... more» Tired of grading all those student papers? Outsource to Bangalore! At least India has enough literate citizens left to do the job... more» [faulty link repaired] White Canadians are deeply racist people. As Jonathan Kay found out, to deny this is itself an act of racism. The key is that they learn to confess... more» Rwanda’s U.N. ambassador at the start of the 1994 genocide vanished in the U.S. It now turns out he lives in Alabama... more» Human evolution can help explain what goes on in fiction. At the same time, fiction can tell us about thought processes built by evolution itself... more» Religion can give enchantment to the lives of believers, pushing birthrates over those of secular couples. It follows that in the next fifty years... more» Edith Grossman wants readers to savor the humor, melancholy, and intellectual and aesthetic complexity of Don Quixote, not to treat it as an academic puzzle... more» Long before Kinsey, an obscure Stanford professor polled Victorian-era women on their views of sex, but kept secret the startling results... more» Was it Bacon? The Earl of Oxford? Now Marlowe’s star is again on the rise. In fact, each candidate keeps coming back every 75 years or so... more» When Mike Penner decided to change his sex, he became a symbol of courage for the transgender community. Then it all went wrong... more» There was never an artist as modern as Francisco Goya: thinker, painter, and sell-it yourself printmaker long before punk rockers took up the act... more» “Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He chose it.” But whatever happened to Fountain?... more» Jamie Oliver’s mission is to bring healthy food to fat, slothful Americans, at taxpayer expense, of course. Good luck, Jamie... more» The Original of Laura is almost the last new Nabokov fiction we will see. But there are many more pages of Nabokov in full flow, not dammed up by death... more» Super-sizing the Last Supper. Portions for Jesus and the Disciples have risen over the last thousand years... more» Travel writing in the age of mass tourism. A lot of it is creative hanging-out. It even tends to look pretty pointless... more» A.J. Ayer was a philosopher of renown and a steadfast atheist. In the end, his closest friend was Father Frederick Coplestone... more» Fryderyck Chopin was stuck in the fog of London: “One day longer here and I won’t just die – I’ll go mad”... more» What’s next at the science museum? A display of Star Trek sets? IMAX travel films? Climate scare stories? Any serious science?... more» Forcing diversity training on workers may have little effect on prejudice, but does tend to leave people more resentful... more» Indians love Facebook. They get to tell everyone what they are doing – and to stick their noses into other people’s business... more» The Arab world today: stagnation and turmoil prevail, as colossal wealth and hypermodern cities collide with mass illiteracy and rage-filled imams... more» At Arts & Letters Daily we never endorse anything except our own T-shirts and coffee mugs. We’re not up for an $11,000 FTC fine. But how about you?... more» Those were the days. There is a good dose of nostalgia in Terry Eagleton’s memoir of socialism in the 1970s... more» The deadly Chechnya insurgency, which the Kremlin says is all but defeated, is spilling out from the mountains that have sheltered rebels for centuries... more» How shameful for the world’s rich to downplay their own environmental impact because today’s poor people might one day get just as rich... more» Charles Darwin’s natural selection is one of the grandest ideas of any age. Herbert Spencer’s use of Darwin is quite another story... more» Not your normal workplace. In winter, the Arctic is chaotic, manifold, and cruel in how it metes out death. Which it does, often... more» In 1895, Wall Street was making bets as to when the U.S. Treasury would run out of gold and default on its debts. Then J.P. Morgan stepped in... more» Starbucks is 39 years old now, and like a lot people who reach that age, it’s going through a bit of an identity crisis... more» You can’t explain natural selection by appeals to domestication. There is no mind in Darwin’s nature to conduct a breeding program. Oh, yeah?... more» The successes of Timothy Geithner and his boss are clouded by job losses and anger at Wall Street. Geithner remains unrepentant... more» The 13-note Bohlen-Pierce musical scale offers composers a strange world where melodic lines can have new expressive abilities... more» Ego and humility, talent and chance, hysteria and silent feeling: these polarities are magnified in our actors... more» Whether he’s right or wrong, the debate Alan Sokal started matters. Philosophers should pay attention to him... more» Disasters have no logic, but the recovery that follows a disaster is deeply political. Chile has democracy. Chile will survive... more» Wal-Mart or Whole Foods? Where would you buy your groceries? Corby Kummer set out to search for a serious answer to the question... more» Cesar Chavez became in death both a Mexican saint and an American hero. He was in life, of course, a conspicuous failure... more» Caffeine addicts can get their fill with the Arts & Letters Daily coffee mug. Also tested with herbal teas. Works fine... Advert» New facts, especially when complex, and where they replace beliefs already in your mind, may take a while to soak in... more» “It sucks,” says an Internet movie critic, using the most common aesthetic reaction on the Web. Goodbye to smart criticism... more» Saddam Hussein’s list of friends, aides, and accomplices was rigid enough to make possible the use of network theory to capture him... more» The crash of Air France flight 447 from Rio to Paris last year is one of the most mysterious disasters in aviation history. A picture now emerges... more» The general problem with America is not poverty, it is inequality, which is much worse since the 1970s. We can shift back, argues Kate Pickett... more» The wars are long over, but the German problem is back. This time Germany isn’t flexing its muscles: it’s feeling a sense of national atrophy... more» “Never open a book with weather.” Good advice on writing fiction from one of the most successful writers of our age. And there’s more... part 1 ... part 2 “The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic,” says Temple Grandin. “It’s like being in a play; I’m always in a play”... more» Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Fryderyk Chopin, a composer whose mysterious music is not as merely pretty as it sounds... more» The U.S. government poisoned its own citizens during Prohibition. All in the name of a war on moral decay, of course... more» We dug ourselves out of the snow, had a nice lie-down, and we’re tweeting again! Get Arts & Letters Daily’s Twitter feed. Was the Hiroshima bomb a dud? It seems not, despite sensational claims made in a new book on the first atomic attack... more» The intractable Afghanistan problem: hundreds of Taliban immersed in local populations, indistinguishable from them and ready and willing to fight... more» Population density of Mumbai slums: one million people per square mile. What can slum and squatter life tell us about the future of the planet?... more» Moral intelligence, an innate sense of right and wrong, allowed both dogs and early human societies to flourish and spread across the world... more» New Left Review has turned fifty, but with no balloons or party games. The very idea of “celebration” smacks of consumerist pseudo-optimism... more» Queen Victoria was a passionate and rather open-minded woman whose tastes in painting ran toward plenty of naked flesh... more» Orest Ranum had worked for ten years on a history of early modern Europe. On the night of May 22, 1968, all his notes were burned by students of the SDS... more» Civil asset forfeiture was going to be a tool for dealing with serious organized crime. As Radley Balko explains, it is now a source of outrageous injustice... more» For 400 years the delivery of letters has been integral to British life. The history of the Royal Mail is in itself a social history of Britain... more» Mixed asset ownership, basic property rights, and heavy state intervention. Is the Beijing consensus a path to economic success? Maybe not... more» If we want a happy ending, at some point with Shakespeare we must draw a line and close our eyes to the injustice an ending may entail. Consider Shylock... more» Forget about aid. People in the poorest countries like Haiti need new cities with different rules. And developed countries should be the ones that build them... more» Lady Jane Grey, the “nine-day queen,” was virginal, sweet, and beheaded at the age of 16, a notorious victim of the Tudors, or so it is thought... more» Humor is a far more complex process than primeval pleasures like sex or food, but just as much tied to the inner complexity of the brain... more» Falling from an airplane. You just might live to tell the tale. Herewith a 120-mph, 35,000-ft, 3-minutes-to-impact survival guide... more» Casanova made prodigious use of English frock coats, the “little preventive bag invented by the English to save the fair sex from anxiety”... more» Should a room that Langston Hughes lived in for a couple of years be turned into a museum, a tourist destination? Will this save the neighborhood?... more» Percussionists of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra can beat the bejesus out of their drums, to comic effect. But they too are victims, as much as the Iranians... more» The human brain, for all its power, is quite suspicious of difficulty. Effective marketers, politicians, and sales people all know to keep it simple... more» Is media multitasking driven by a desire for new information or a wish to avoid hard thinking? The easy option dressed up like something hard... more» “When you say banker, a lot of people think Jewish.” So what if they do? What if people are just a little prejudiced about Jewish bankers?... more» Howard Zinn, historian, shipyard worker, and author of A People’s History of the United States, is dead... NYT ... WP ... LAT ... Dissent ... Bob Herbert ... Ron Radosh ... Boston Globe ... Progressive ... Benjamin Kerstein ... Christopher Phelps ... Roger Kimball ... Independent J. D. Salinger, reclusive author whose Catcher in the Rye caught the mood of a generation, is dead ... Charles McGrath ... AP ... Stephen Miller ... Elaine Woo ... London Times ... Bart Barnes ... FT ... Telegraph ... Mark Krupnick ... Richard Lacayo ... Tom Leonard ... Martin Levin ... Rick Moody ... Richard Lea ... Malcolm Jones ... Morgan Meis ... Chris Wilson ... Robert Fulford ... Ian Shapira ... Michael Ruse ... Christopher Reynolds ... David Usborne ... Joe Gross ... Stephen King ... John Walsh ... Henry Allen ... Mark Feeney ... Ron Rosenbaum (1997) ... John Timpane ... Alex Beam ... Verlyn Klinkenborg ... Tom McGlaughlin ... David Ulin ... his neighbors ... Mark Medley ... Stephen Metcalf and Slate staff ... John Wenke ... Jeff Simon ... Tom Leonard ... Andrea Sachs ... David Lodge ... Christopher Hitchens ... Lionel Shriver ... Barbara Kay ... Nathanial Rich ... The Onion ... Holden’s heirs ... Lillian Ross ... Adam Gopnik ... John Seabrook ... Dave Eggers ... new photos ... Mark Bauerlein et al. in NYT ... Adam Kirsch ... Colby Cosh ... A.M. Homes ... Martin Amis et al. ... Robert McCrum ... Julian Barnes et al. ... Joan Smith ... Adam Golub ... Virginia Heffernan ... Jonathan Yardley on “Salinger’s execrable prose and Caulfield’s jejune narcissism” (2004). Philip K. Dick bounced in and out of love affairs and marriages, stints in rehab and drug overdoses, never losing his cool. Well, almost never... more» Daily life of the jihadis: rants, the usual aggressive posturing, murderous threats, and dreams of paradise. Also, problems with frying eggs... more» Louis Auchincloss, novelist who plumbed the world of Manhattan’s old-money elite, has died at the age of 92... NYT ... FT Great teachers can’t be identified in any reliable, objective way. They have a gift: some mystical quality we revere but can’t replicate... more» Bribery is a national disease in India, one that is widely viewed as incurable. Now a new idea is helping people to take a stand against it: the zero-rupee note... more» As a juror, he was skeptical, as a citizen, he was angry. Sure, the guy had sold $10 worth of dope. But the police can’t just fabricate evidence... more» Emotions trump rules. This is why, when we speak of moral role models, we think of their hearts, not their brains. Frans de Waal explains... more» After the main performance, crowds in 16th-century London playhouses were treated to a late-night B-feature of rude, lewd farce, known as the “jig”... more» |
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New BooksMoscow may have burned for six days, but still, Napoleon lost – and victory belonged to Tsar Alexander I and his generals... more» Two travelers, an English woman and a French man, arrived in Egypt in 1849, within days of each other. Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert... more» ... more» Diana was married in Goebbels’s drawing room with Hitler as witness. The Mitford sisters were unable to avoid the pull of cads and creeps... more» France’s current identity crisis, in all its ferocity and venom, has deep roots in the history of Gallic society, going back long before 1789... more» For H.G. Wells, the most prolific author of his age, writing was like scratching an endless itch. And given that he was randy as a goat... more» What makes Martin Heidegger’s Nazism into a challenge, rather than merely a scandal, is that he did not drift into evil, but thought his way into it... more» The first challenge of sorrow is cognitive, says Leon Wieseltier: “Making Toast is a small glowing jewel in the literature of grief”... more» Why is it that when fascist ideas emanate from Islam, intellectuals prefer to call them “totalitarian”? Because the latter word is abstract, odorless, uh, nicer... more»
John Cage’s 4'33'' was not greeted with anything like the riot provoked by The Rite of Spring. By the 1950s, audiences knew too much... more» The story of yoga in America is one of scandal, financial shenanigans, oversize egos, bizarre love triangles – and performing elephants... more» David Foster Wallace. How could a writer whose prose breathed in life so fully, who wrote in the biggest, boldest type, simply silence himself?... more» Fifty years of the pill: it has reshaped our ideas about sex, marriage, and family, turning childbearing from an obligation into an option... more» Daily global hydrocarbon use is 200 million barrels of oil equivalent, or about 23.5 times Saudi Arabia’s daily output. To replace that with wind turbines... more» Terry Eagleton regards two core values for a meaningful life: love and happiness – treated as ends in themselves... more» Knut Hamsun won the Nobel Prize, but you won’t find the medal on display in Norway. The author regifted it to Joseph Goebbels... more» Fashions in social explanation come and go, but there remains no substitute for game theory in modeling human behavior... more» Skepticism, yes, egomania and arrogance, no. As Descartes, hero of scientists and skeptics everywhere, said, skepticism, like charity, begins at home... more» Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and Jerry Fodor may not be creationists, but that only makes more flagrant the stupidity of their case against Darwin... more» Struwwelpeter, with its sadism, humor, and dark justice, is a book adults love to hate and children find enthralling. No wonder it’s in over 100 languages... more» Shakespeare’s work is distinguished from every other great writer in the astounding comprehensiveness of his treatment of love and sex... more» For Anthony Grayling, cures for human ills are obvious, if only people were not so blinded by superstition. He may have to say it one more time... more» Britain has lost traditional religion, but it has gained, uh, environmentalism, spiritual relativism, multiculturalism, and other really cool stuff in its place... more» Childhood play evolved along with high human intelligence. The smartest animals are the most playful... more» Baby moose at play ...amateur video Barack Obama’s African-American persona is his own invention, rather than one based on grievance, anger, and protest. What a difference it makes... more» Hitler kept Schopenhauer’s works in his knapsack through WWI, so he claimed. Too bad that he couldn’t actually spell the philosopher’s name... more» Working for Henry Luce meant “selling out.” Journalists hated themselves, but they cashed his checks, ate his food on deadline nights, drank his booze... more» Rules to govern our choices can debilitate us. They also can empower. Taking away choices can give a greater sense of control in life... more» The financial crisis should lay to rest any belief in “rational” markets. The craziness in mortgage markets, securitization, and derivatives is mind-boggling... more» Proof of the Poincaré Conjecture may or may not be worth a million dollars, but the aesthetic and epistemic value of such a proof is beyond price... more» Why even bother with Charles Dickens, a vain actor-manager type who used pathetic victims as tear-jerking raw material for his novels? Why, indeed... more» After Napoleon destroyed the Russian army at Austerlitz in 1805, it was only a matter of time before another showdown with the Tsar... more» Dead Poets’ Society. The history of poetry is not just a chronicle of influence. It is a conversation between the living and the dead... more» Richard Wagner created a world of drama, beauty, fascination, strong emotions and, yes, politics that can become the center of a lifetime’s interest... more» Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life. He spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed advice on how to remain chaste. But beyond that... more» For Philo of Alexandria, heaven was an eternal philosophy seminar. For medieval rabbis it was a vast library where books jumped into your hands... more» Perry Anderson may have tacitly changed or abandoned old political goals, but his tone of omniscience and trademark hauteur remain... more» If an artist or writer, say, Charles Dickens or V.S. Naipaul, has a bad character, why does it matter to us? Why should it matter at all?... more» The American fertility rate is 50% higher than Russia, Germany, or Japan, and much higher than China. This will make for enormous differences... more» Simone de Beauvoir didn’t deny the basic biological and erotic differences between men and women. But she could never combine difference with equality... more» R.G. Collingwood, the irascible but brilliant philosopher and historian, has needed a warm and forgiving biography. He has it at last... more» Paris Syndrome affects about 20 tourists a year: the shock of seeing that Paris is not all accordions, flowers, cobbled streets... more» Joseph Pulitzer went from cub reporter to newspaper magnate and being the boss from hell whose sound-proof yacht cut him off from the rest of humanity... more» If academia was slow to take up the poetry of Dorothy Parker, that is the price of popularity. Today, even feminists have let her into the canon... more» Where do we get this grotesque idea that men set the standard for all achievement and women succeed or fail in life in by trying to live up to it?... more» The Dreyfus Affair was the first big test of a modern justice system. It asked, can we use a current crisis to bend the rule of law?... more» Ours is a culture that extols honesty and self-revelation. These values are set against the mystery of glamour, which is cool, aloof... more» Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was nearly called Alice’s Hour in Elfland – by Edgar U.C. Westhill. And that’s not all... more» Fowler’s Modern English Usage, seen as a “schoolmasterly, quixotic” book, retains a firm hold on lovers of the language... more» Doubts about Shakespeare as the author of those plays turns on both snobbery and the idea that, in a literal way, you are what you write... more» America’s population is going to expand dramatically in coming decades, unlike its rapidly aging rivals. Good news, says Joel Kotkin... more» Terry Castle is not bashful about her faults. Her willingness to laugh at them rather than defend them takes the breath away, really... more» Golda Meir once said, à propos Israel’s existence: “To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be”... more» To adore the novels of E.M. Forster is to count oneself among “the aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky”... more» Fred Harvey’s restaurants offered more than just decent food in the American West in the 1880s. They also offered wives... more» Violet Gibson, a lady with both gumption and a pistol, shot Benito Mussolini in 1926. Nicking his nose was not quite enough to change the course of history... more» Americans made a “refined and intelligent egotism,” said Alexis de Tocqueville, into “the pivot” on which the machine of democracy turns... more» Americans export their diagnoses and cures for mental illness across the globe. But why should the rest of the world be crazy like them?... more» Katie dreamed of college as a place where she’d learn why she so loved the beauties of Rembrandt. Then she took art history... more» It is possible to feel intense nostalgia for a past that you would despise, if you could have it back. Consider postwar Britain... more» The more we learn about addictions, the more they are regarded as diseases, with big implications for freedom and responsibility... more» Pearl Buck played as a child in a Chinese town where wild dogs foraged for girl babies routinely exposed to die on waste land... more» Lewis Carroll is a many-faced persona in a drama that was played and scripted by an Oxford don of authentic genius... more» Mario Savio was a revolutionary, logician, poet, and libertarian – a lightning rod who could not quite conduct the energy he’d attracted... more» If you want to pick holes in evolution, you need to grasp what Darwinian science tries to achieve. A new book on Darwin fails to do this... more» ... further dispute Simple-minded moral posturing on Darfur by celebrities and rights activitsts has made the conflict even worse... more» Given the choice between a middling novel and a middling work of nonfiction, the latter will at least offer a few new facts... more» Joan Houlihan’s new poems are playful in coinage and raw in imagery, but ultimately graceful and pleasing in rhythm... more» It’s possible to make the case that the most important thing about Bob Dylan is his Jewishness. But it’s a stretch... more» The half-mad Nina Simone was like an exotic queen of some secret ritual. She also got that diploma from the Curtis Institute, though a little late... more» Putting down the Mau Mau Rebellion was yet another instance of colonial brutality by Britain, says Daniel Goldhagen. Is this claim true?... more» Heidegger was undoubtedly a genius. You can tell he was a genius because his philosophy is so hard to grasp... more» The history of the Baader-Meinhof Gang is a story of violence, murder, and even, in the end, suicide made to look like murder... more» And God Created Football. For some fans, there are intimations of the divine in a well-executed screen pass... more» If John Quincy Adams was the brightest president, he was also the least likable. But his wife, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams... more» The Cold War standoff between the West and the Soviets seemed at the time unlikely to collapse into total war. But the Cold War was more dangerous... more» Rainbow trout: lovely dappled denizen of deep lake and rushing river, prize of pork-barrel politics, killer of native fish... more» An evolutionary adaptation that might have promised survival in the Pleistocene is more likely nowadays to produce Type 2 diabetes... more» Tolkien regretted not being part Jewish: “I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.” Would Lord of the Rings exist were he Jewish?... more» Life with Elizabeth and John Edwards was a snake pit. Now one of the snakes gives us his memoir. You may want to shower after reading the book... more» E.D. Hirsch is an antidote to our culture wars, our feel-goodism. He reminds us of America’s great potential: that’s why he is such a great American... more» If religion is a Darwinian adaptation, it must be for groups, not individuals. Those who practiced religion prevailed over those who did not... more» Old English was an elegant tongue, yet one that mirrored the brutality of its times. The Dictionary of Old English is tying it all together... more» From a little Simone Weil wannabe to one of the great ironists of academe, Terry Castle’s story is told with wit and vitality... more» Is music “cheesecake for the mind,” as Steven Pinker put it? Well, if you can show that Homo sapiens has a deep emotional need for cheesecake... more» We all know how the Odyssey ends. But that ending is not the only one possible. And what might have happened after the final scene?... more» Are you an intellectual? Then please be warned: Thomas Sowell’s new book will not raise your self-esteem. Might not damage it much, either... more» The Dreyfus Affair was a culmination of vast and largely destructive changes that had convulsed the French state through the whole of the 19th century... more» Heinrich von Kleist, an author for whom too much consciousness was a disease, only wrote eight stories. They are glories of world literature... more» Why have 277,500 high-risk, expensive flights through Soviet airspace to supply West Berlin so faded in memory? Richard Reeves wondered... more» Science as a model for democracy: citizens are not coerced toward a specified goal, but experiment without end... more» The knife and the gun can become tools for murder in an irrational instant. But poison needs quiet calculation... more» Posterity hasn’t had much trouble knowing what to do with Emily Dickinson: revere her as a poet and sentimentalize her life... more» History once had a public role in Britain. Today, British historians find their warmest reception abroad, not least in the U.S., where history still matters... more» Material advance remains vital to human welfare, despite huge gains of the past two centuries. Only the rich and thoughtless can afford to think otherwise... more» The war must have seemed far away from Monticello in 1779 when Thomas Jefferson joined a Hessian prisoner in a violin duet, with Martha Jefferson on the pianoforte... more» Orson Welles’s funeral was a tawdry and chaotic affair, reminding his daughter of dumping Mozart’s body into a pauper’s grave... more» Cesare Borgia: ruthless, power-hungry and peacock-vain. But he was also brilliant, charismatic, and educated in the classics, a true Renaissance man... more» We all have experienced a sudden rush of emotion on hearing a particular piece of music; a thrill or chill, a feeling of being swept away by music... more» Yalta: Stalin, Churchill, and FDR blithely pushing pet ideas or haggling over details that would affect millions of people for generations to come... more» North Korea has created a sort of new species. Starving, ignorant, stunted dwarves, living in the dark, brainwashed into the hatred... more» America could take Ayn Rand out of Russia, but not Russia out of Ayn Rand. Her work belongs to the history of Russian, not American, literature... more» ... They love her, they hate her Hergé’s characters never age. Tintin is outside of time. Children also have a sense of existing outside of adult time and can identify with this... more» The Bauhaus in its later years became a kind of religion, with apostasy and heretics that had to be excommunicated by those who still held the true light... more» From Napoleon’s defeat to the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Tom Standage argues, food has ways of defining the course of events... more» Rebecca Goldstein does not want to shake your faith in God or confirm it, but she’ll make you a believer in the power of fiction... more» Stephen Fry has found something nice to say about nearly every American state he has visited. Except New Jersey... more» Love: once ferocious and passionate, it has today been defused and made tepid – streamlined, safety-checked, and emptied of spiritual consequence... more» Disney’s Three Little Pigs is Aristotelian from start to finish: plot, necessity, fear, revenge, resolution, catharsis. Now a new version challenges these values... more» Jacques Derrida was a contrarian and a skeptic who had a weakness for prophetic tones, for apocalyptic drama... more» Despite tragedies of war and terrorism in our age, the world has seen huge progress in living standards and personal freedom for most of the human race... more» The number of different possible chess games is 10120, says Garry Kasparov. Look eight moves ahead and you confront as many games as stars in the galaxy... more» With morality, we build a castle in the air and then live in it. It has no objective foundation, but it is a real castle. You can say the same of money... more» From Freud to Marxism to ESP to a whole series of women, when in the grip of a mania, Arthur Koestler was incapable of seeing anything else... more» Irving Thalberg knew he was fated to an early death. This made him impatient with mediocrity and ambitious for success in his limited time... more» Poetry hardly ever gets reviewed, which leaves readers to their own devices. It’s not so hard to be your own poetry critic. Lessons from Joan Houlihan... more» | |
Essays and OpinionGorbachev laughed about the downing of Korean flight 007, and cared nothing for Tiananmen victims. Then there’s Neil Kinnock. Joe Biden, even. Random House, please explain... more» Is the “New Atheism” the cultural watershed its purveyors like to think, or a marketing vogue, bound to go the way of pet rocks, disco, and prime-time soaps?... more» Ray Bradbury’s stories still sing on the page because they aren’t about technologies of robots, automated houses, and rocket men, but about how people live... more» How did the study of literature as an art come to be replaced by the mix of bad philosophy and worse prose academics call Theory? Where is Jorge Luis Borges when you need him?... more» Strange to recall that linguists in the 1980s were predicting that fragmented English was doomed as a world tongue. Quite to the contrary... more» No self-respecting professor of philosophy wants to discuss the soul in class. It reeks of old-time theology, or worse, New Age quantum treacle... more» Rather than pointing fingers, Greeks should look in the mirror, says Theodore Dalrymple. And how about Britain, which has now become the Greece of the North Sea?... more» Medical Hypotheses, a journal created in order to air and scientifically debate controversial ideas, has had its editor fired. Seems he allowed the debate of controversial ideas... more» When The Onion reported, “New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths,” it supported a tradition going back to Freud. Are small children actually moral beings?... more» How did we get here? How did we get to the point where just about every new classical dance, with the hippest costumes on the hottest bodies, is meaningless?... more» A capacity for embarrassment is a marker of normal humanity. Or at least it should be. Why has it fallen into such decline? Christine Rosen wonders... more» Sexual reproduction in animals tends to generate an array of offspring, says David Barash, making for healthy genetic diversity. In fact, we need individuality to survive... more» Why cry over split milk? Especially when served with a nice peanut better sandwhich? Typos are a way of life, and not only here at Arts & Letters Dialy... more» 3-D movies infantilize the medium, dim the retinal image, degrade dramatic experience, nauseate viewers, and inflate ticket prices, says Roger Ebert... more» Why is it that a personal, hand-drawn map can be so very much more useful than a map pulled off the Web? Julia Turner wonders... more» Naomi Klein’s No Logo became a research bible for marketers selling to consumers who wanted meaning, integrity, and moral purpose in their shopping carts. Thank you, Naomi!... more» Attention, Whole Foods shoppers! Your worries about “sustainability,” organic onions, and saving the planet do nothing for the plight of the world’s poorest people... more» It’s a trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, and you are in it up to your eyes. The U.S. government issues more and more debt to pay off previous debt. One day, we’ll wake up... more» Whether the world is ready or not, India is set to become a global power. The United States, says C. Raja Mohan, ought to be the first to welcome the fact... more» Makes no difference if a government borrows from foreigners or from its own citizens, banking crises can be mortal shocks for any economy. Big debt is a big danger... more» We Boy Scouts were black, white, thin, fat, rich and poor, and united in being geeks. We rather disliked our uniforms, says Paul Theroux... more» Did Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, make important contributions to his early scientific work, news of which has been suppressed?... more» George Orwell’s timeless, transcendent fairy story, Animal Farm, is still outlawed by regimes around the world. Why is it such political dynamite?... more» Down with factory farms, enormous TVs, SUVs, and outlet malls: the Simplicity Movement asks, well, for simplicity. If you’re rich enough to afford it... more» Globalization swallows all. Countries that refuse to join in the world economic system are pushed aside, reduced, humiliated. Well, yes, but why refuse?... more» Worst-case panic over volcanic ash and flying is not rational risk assessment, says Frank Furedi. In fact, it’s downright stupid... more» Swine flu déjà vu, writes Simon Jenkins Journalism is reductive, says David Hare. Art opens up reality to us, making it deeper, thicker, more surprising. Art never tells you what you already know... more» Reduced to wielding clubs, the Lord’s Resistance Army is as outmatched as any insurgency could be. So why can’t it be stopped?... more» Will anyone ever write a literary biography of Nick Mamatas? “I am a failure,” he says, “so I’ve got that going for me. I suspect I’ll be long dead before I ever become interesting”... more» Advice for the end: forget about God, death, pain, and acquisition. But does detachment from such large questions and daily dramas make life rich and complex enough to be worth living?... more» Bernard DeVoto died in 1955, but the spirit he fought can be found today from halls of academe to late-night comics such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert... more» Jobbik: Hungary’s backward-looking, chauvinist party has seats in parliament for the first time, suggesting that zombie politics may have a place in Europe’s future... more» Harold Ross ordered his New Yorker writers to stop using the word understandably. “I saw it in Life the other day and when Life takes up a word it is time for us to unload”... more» The collusion of humane organizations and police powers of the state in seizing and killing dogs has frightening implications... more» Bob Geldof, gruff, messy-haired savior of Africa, has been celebrated as a secular saint who brought “authenticity” to discourse about global poverty... more» Might Flannery O’Connor’s Catholic faith cause the brilliance of her art to fade in an age of militant secularism? Seems not, as her reputation continues to grow... more» It’s easy to wax eloquent about the golden age of freedom in early America – so long as you forget about slavery. David Boaz explains... more» “Politics, power, and control have no legitimate role in our community,” says one mathematician. When they encroach on research, for instance on the Poincaré conjecture... more» Sarah Palin can talk like a child and still be lionized by perfectly intelligent people as an avatar of U.S. culture – which linguistically, let’s face it, she is... more» Unrealistic, dithering academics keep on promoting Ph.D programs in the humanities that can lead to no jobs – taking advantage of the aspirations and idealism of young people... more» In ten thousand years, just supposing that any of our descendants are still around, Beethoven will be there, communicating with human beings like no one else... more» If our brains represent numbers only vaguely, how were we able to invent numbers in the first place? What about the tribe that can only count to five?... more» Repression 2.0. Among the 300 million internet users in China, there are 50 million bloggers. The authorities will never control that. Oh, yeah?... more» Globish is not about a 1500-word vocabulary, but about how Indians, Chinese, and Africans are making English into a liberating force. Robert McCrum explains... more» Mark and Delia Owens were keen in their devotion to protecting elephants from poachers in Zambia. They indisputably did good work, but should poachers be shot?... more» ... video Historians, please note. If ever there existed a scientific theory that is fundamentally historical, that explains change over time, it is Darwin’s evolution by natural selection... more» You can’t reason with the absurd, as IKEA found when it tried to build a model business in Russia. Institutional corruption there is out of control... more» With the coyness of someone revealing a bizarre sexual taste, my patients would say to me, “Doctor, I think I’m suffering from low self-esteem.” Hmmm, perhaps not... more» People tend to want easily digestible wisdom from philosophers. Give ’em a break: next time you sit next to one on a plane, talk about the movie, not the meaning of life... more» “How would my life have been different had I not spent the last three months reading War and Peace?” Kevin Hartnett asks an arresting question... more» Theological censorship backed by death threats is now installed in Europe. Intellectuals have decided it’s wise to keep silent about it. What a scandal... more» Physicist John Polkinghorne surprised many in 1979 by deciding to become an Anglican priest. Science and religion both remain important for him ... more» Armond White spoke at the NY Film Critics Circle banquet in January. Stars like Meryl Streep, George Clooney, and Kathryn Bigelow were there. The response? Stony silence... more» On cold Sakhalin Island, Anton Chekhov watched floggings and saw wardens embezzle food from helpless prisoners. The human depths.... more» The Greatest Generation lived through the Depression. Then came the Boomers, obsessed with themselves. But what about those born in between, during the war?... more» Consider the plight of clergy who have lost their faith. Give up the pulpit? Quit the congregation? For many clergy, these are tortured questions... more» George W. Bush left office bruised not only by his many critics, but by conservative intellectuals who had once supported him. Will Barack Obama suffer a parallel fate?... more» So we now blame Srebrenica on gay Dutch soldiers. Pansies! But hang on, says Toby Young. We’ve had fine military leaders who were as queer as a three-speed walking stick... more» Tony Judt was asking for trouble, taking that grad student out for dinner. He’d read his Foucault and knew the rules. What made him think he’d get away with it?... more» Toppling dictatorships and preventing mass murder is important. But the ways leaders treat their people is not the only problem in international affairs... more» Sandra Bullock is Best Actress. But really, do we need a best actress Oscar? Isn’t the whole idea sexist? Denis Dutton says, “Hell, no”... more» Robinson Crusoe was disinherited by his dad, who thought he was dead. Today, dad would check Facebook. And if Odysseus had access to GPS... more» Avatar exceeds the normal bounds of its art in an attempt to reach for the better, higher, newer – in fact, it tries to validate the director as kind of superhero... more» Graduate school in the humanities may not be a sure ticket to a career, says James Mulholland, but it is neither a “trap” nor a “lie”... more» “Beethoven infuses the universe with the power of his spirit,” said Chopin. “I decided my universe would be the soul and heart of man”... more» You like pancakes and sausages? Then you are going to love Jimmy Dean’s Pancakes & Sausage on a stick. Accept no substitutes... more» Classical music has become too solemn. Alex Ross wants concert halls to be unpredictable places, in thrall to the wildly diverse personalities of composers and performers alike... more» Evolution lets us see comics, that most mass of the mass arts, in a panoramic human context but also in extreme close-up. Brian Boyd explains... more» The Germans wanted a unified Europe, but they didn’t figure on paying their neighbors’ bills till the end of time... more» ... more» ... The Euro is finished. From pole-dancing to baking cupcakes, modern woman now thinks she can do it all. Charlotte Raven looks back with shame at the moment when her generation turned its back on feminism... more» The BBC is right. Libya’s airport is “ultra modern,” if by that you mean Egyptian chewing gum, cheap watches celebrating Qaddafi, and ’zines with Hugo Chavez on their covers... more» Thank you for not expressing yourself. We do not have reader comments at Arts & Letters Daily. To see why, consider a few remarks from Theodore Dalrymple... more» Isn’t it time that the Ten Commandments had a rewrite? Christopher Hitchens thinks so, and he fancies that he is up to the job... more» Peer-reviewed science, touchstone of truth in empirical research. Don’t ask who the peers are, or how the review was conducted. Just believe... more» Culture has become a force in human evolution, one that even accelerates evolution, as people adapt to pressures of their own creation... more» The Iranian film industry has a long tradition of high-quality dubbings, Brian T. Edwards explains. Look at what they’ve done in multiple versions to Shrek... more» The Exile was perhaps the most crass and abusive publication in Russia, and it is surprising it lasted so long. But it was a threat to Vladimir Putin... more» Should some kinds of music, especially pop, be positively discouraged, others encouraged? Standing with Plato, Roger Scruton answers a resounding yes... more» Britain has some creepy ways of policing its citizens. But turning classical music into a weapon, with Mozart a tool of state repression, marks a new low... more» Communism’s end wasn’t Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history.” André Glucksmann argues that to leave communism was to enter history... more» Anne Hutchinson died in 1643, but her long argument with Puritanism once made her the most hated woman in America. She is still worth remembering... more» Who are the best poets writing today? In truth, it is very hard for anyone to know. While there might be a Blake and a Dickinson buried in the overgrowth, we may never know... more» Public-sector unions and their political allies are looting the public treasury with gold-plated pensions, placing at risk the finances of state and local governments... more» In hospitals, beauty parlors, and construction sites, from rich countries to poor, the money stays in the family. John Gravois on remittance economies... more» Amnesty International was built on noble ideals of freedom of thought, but it has lost its way. It should not be defending just any prisoner, jailed for any crime... more» Long before Hollywood took up the cause Tibet was viewed as a place of spiritual purity, perfect blue skies, prayer flags, and deeply happy people. Reality is less clear... more» Boredom is often quite exquisite. To be sure, it can be a sad affair, and it’s related to emptiness, but in a perfectly enjoyable way... more» Sending fathers into military combat has been a tragedy for as long as war has existed. Sending mothers along with them makes life unimaginably worse... more» A dying language. If it belongs to a tribe in the Amazon Basin or an Aboriginal group in the Outback, we worry. But how is Yiddish doing?... more» Masters of American literature. With the death of J.D. Salinger, a remarkable, unrivalled generation era in Ameican fiction came to its end... more» The Olympics and other international sporting competitions, rather than creating amity, breed conflict and bring out the worst in people... more» Advocacy research that extends some perceived threat to absurd proportions is degrading the name of science. Consider third-hand smoke... more» J.K. Galbraith quite easily saw the moral defects of businessmen – megalomania, greed, hypocrisy, and special pleading – but did not see the same in government bureaucrats... more» What’s wrong with the boomers, a British take. “We once thought our children would grow up into a far better world than the one in which we reached adulthood. They didn’t”... more» It is a philosophical education to keep chickens, live with them, and treat them with courtesy. All chickens are not born equal, but they deserve equal respect... more» Is it desirable for society to designate some group as “bioethicists” with expertise in resolving the most difficult moral questions we face? How are these people experts?... more» Tens of thousands of years of human mating norms are evaporating as Cro-Magnon males drag women into their caves, and the women love every minute of it... more» Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse is much more than a restaurant. It is a standard-bearer for correct moral values, and now it will dictate our kids’ education. Do we really want this?... more» Predictions of America’s decline relative to the might of Asia are vastly overstated. Asia lags far behind the U.S. in military might, political influence, and even economic stability... more» Constantly updating your “friends” on Facebook, like joining a room full of chattering people, is no substitute for an actual conversation... more» Robert Lipsyte is a Super Bowl ad fan. He’d rather go to the bathroom during a third-down play than miss a commercial. And he is always ready to share his all-time favorites... more» Let the West bring a WTO free-trade case against China for Web censorship. As Marx said, trade is the “heavy artillery” that “batters down all Chinese walls.” Including computer firewalls... more» “England is a cesspit,” says Wole Soyinka. “It is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic”... more» Obedience to authority is not just a way for rulers to keep order in China, but is an essential part of being Chinese. Enter Google... more» The state’s grasping hand even reaches into the pockets of generations unborn, says Peter Sloterdijk. Call it, “The pillage of the future by the present”... more» What happened to the place of work in fiction? In the modern novel, a job tends to be as much a marginal detail of a character’s life as her hair color... more» Despite some European political figures trying to rekindle old fires, Europe will survive its changing ethnic and religious composition, as it has before. John Bowen explains... more» Stephen Toulmin and John E. Smith were both philosophers in the grand sense that still draws young people around the world to the subject. Till logic-choppers drive them away... more» Academic reputations are often made by pygmies who, while standing on the shoulders of giants, try to cut heroic figures down to size. Look what they are doing to Hannah Arendt... more» “The Trailhead Queen was dead,” writes E.O. Wilson. “No fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died”... more» Literary magazines were once launching pads for great writers and big ideas. Is it time to write them off? VQR editor Ted Genoways wonders... more» Defending entitlements and public-sector privileges at any cost will condemn the state to collapse under its own weight. We need to ask what the state must do and what it should leave alone... more» A sad, frigid day in deep winter. Perfect for some literary gloom. The pain, grief, desolation, and ashes of Cormac McCarthy will do nicely... more» It’s hard to think of an American movie before the 1960s that concerned itself with food, says Paula Marantz Cohen. But look at what’s happened since then... more» Would you enter a collapsed supermarket to take food if your kids were starving? Then you are a looter too! Rebecca Solnit on the media and the Haiti disaster... more» Any European intellectual can easily tell you: Europe, not America, offers the world the best model of social and economic life. But, as Clive Crook explains, the case is not so certain... more» Now that President Obama has made his first tweet, he ought to study Cicero. Twitter may be absurd; but it can also hasten the inner ear to the voices and glories of the past... more» “All the uses of nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite scope.” Yep. Another pointless koan from Ralph Waldo Emerson... more» India’s heterodox religions and their traditions remain stronger than the idea of a unified nation-state. They have survived a long and violent history... more» With Eric Rohmer, as with Mozart, Austen, James, and Proust, art was not just about life. It was about discovery and design and reasoning with chaos... more» There are sixteen different government units that run intelligence for the U.S. With fragmentation like that you’d have to be psychic to “connect the dots”... more» “Writing is learned by imitation,” says William Zinsser. Bach needed a model, Picasso needed a model, and when it comes to writing, we all need models... more» Vincent Van Gogh was not merely the innocent, tortured soul of myth, but to the end also a lucid, rational, diligent, and productive artist... more» Happy New Fear! From the Mayans to swine flu to the deadly threat of Y2K to global warming, we are always near to the end of the world... more» ... readers respond Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience, we now have sins of leaving water running, lights on, not recycling, or using plastic grocery bags. It’s our green religion... more» |
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