What seems to prevail in the Dutch zeitgeist amid current challenges, and contrasted against alarming trends of far-right populism in the United States and across the world, is the lesson that tolerance and pluralism do not sustain themselves. No, tolerance and pluralism must be nurtured and, in some cases, even bragged about.
Predictably, a court in Russia banned the documentary film “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” ruling it “propagates extremism and terrorism”; Russia has named Talankin, the film’s main character, a “foreign agent.”
Stumbling upon “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy” by surprise was like waking up to Christmas morning, but reborn as an adult. The size, vibrancy, and overwhelming stillness of this painting are so impressive that it works almost as a trance, or incantation, of natural light.
Friends of Vintage Flight must make strategic decisions when they choose a project, based on the group’s capabilities, the condition of available aircraft, and their historical significance. The Curtiss Robin has a fascinating history as one of the most commercially successful aircraft of the period between the world wars, and began production the year after Lindbergh made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight in 1927.
Other books examine the same subject, though none are quite the same sort of synthesis this book is, a massive history that reads a bit like a massive novel. Indeed, as the accumulation of detailed narrative mounts, the reader finds it more unreal and unfocused, as if, as George Orwell said, in Asia, the closer and more finely tuned the view, the vaguer it gets.
It can be argued that Superman is a fascist symbol, or that he is a reworking of Jesus Christ or the American tall-tale hero, that he embodies the myth of the American Century, the Age of the American, or that he symbolizes the hegemony of American overreach and dominance. He is the quintessential American and the ugly American in the world of the right and the left.
One day, our professor asked the class whether we still believed a pure, just, and equal society was possible. I said “no” loudly without thinking, and I meant it. It is a dangerous place to go for me.
Contemporary writers do not inherit Chinua Achebe’s legacy as a neutral resource. They inherit it as a canon that has already been institutionalized, already been absorbed into systems of evaluation and circulation that reward familiarity. To write within this tradition is to encounter a set of formal and linguistic expectations that are both enabling and constraining.
Journalist Sam Tanenhaus has provided a warts-and-all look at the most consequential figure of modern conservatism who never held office. Despite its doorstop-worthy length, Tanenhaus’s book offers a masterful example of how to capture a man and his era.
“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks, and everyone has a different answer. King, prophet, peasant, rebel, son, shepherd, rabbi, redeemer—to this day, Jesus is what each of us needs him to be.