City Mouse, Country Mouse

Larry and I met years ago in the cubicle-pen of a Fortune-1000 company. Looking back, our separate paths through jobs and geographies now seem to have meandering coherency.

The Painful Persistence of Pruitt-Igoe’s Long Goodbye

Some places record the rise and fall of a significant building, or evoke historical events that took place there. Others, like the site where the notorious St. Louis public housing complex known as Pruitt-Igoe once stood, serve less as memorials than material imprints of loss and unresolved histories.

Seasons of the Southpaw

The basic facts are here, from Spahn’s upbringing in Buffalo to his last year in baseball with the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants, as well as some useful quotes but there are two problems with Freedman's book.

Essay of the Month: “How to Become a Man of Genius”

“It is a mistake to suppose that a man must be either a cynic or an idealist. Both of them have as a common basis of belief the conviction that mankind as it really is is hateful.”

Naivete and the Art of the Imagination

Both of Zadie Smith's essay collections—Changing My Mind and Feel Free—feature extraordinary writing, but Feel Free has a more constantly deeply considered point of view and a wider gathering of material.

Melodrama and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage

Collins provides an uplifting narrative about how a same-sex romantic partnership is validated by the government and comes to hold a more respectful and comfortable place among friends, family, and the larger community. Setbacks are setbacks. Wins are wins. Hopes and fears are clear.

The Geography of Political Dysfunction

Hill’s comprehensive work reflects a diverse skillset, straddling the disciplines of history, journalism, and political science, that lends to a linguistically captivating and informative explanation of Yemen’s experience of regional intervention, tribal patronage, and strongman politics.

Pow! Bam! Biff! Tales of the Comic Book Wars

Slugfest is a fun book for anyone interested in comic books, in American popular culture generally, or in the obsessive and sometimes pathological nature of business competition. But it is not the incisive book about this industry that still awaits its author.

Jazz, the Devil, and Jess Stacy

Something odd and beautiful happened to Jess Stacy that night in 1938. It is easy to have the impression he never experienced anything quite like it again. Stacy had played piano for the Benny Goodman orchestra since 1935 and was on stage the night they (with other musicians) played the…

On Stars and Mules

Before I knew the Wordsworth poem, “The Stars are Mansions Built by Nature’s Hand,” I knew stars. When one grows up in an isolated place, one of the gifts you are given are a riot of stars. In some parts of the world, the sky is still visible with stars…

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