Theodore Roosevelt, Ladies’ Man

Edward O’Keefe posits that despite Theodore Roosevelt’s image as a ruggedly individualistic, über-masculine figure, his career was heavily shaped by five women: his mother, two wives, and two sisters. The result is an interesting, though ultimately unsatisfying, book, The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created A President.

Gerhard Richter

Why Raising an Adolescent Is About Looking Past Your Child

The future is written faster than we can read it, but that does not mean we cannot try, even if all there is to see or read are backs turned toward us, or eyes looking away. One trick of being a capable parent is not overplaying your hand or pressing your argument. Just do your best to see what your child sees.

Requiem for a Punster: Leonard Slatkin Pays Tribute to P.D.Q. Bach (and Peter Schickele)

On Monday, November 25, Leonard Slatkin and the Chamber Music Society of St. Louis will present D.BachL, presumably pronounced “debacle,” a tribute to the composer Peter Schickele.

How Our Mail-Order Age Warps Time and Desire

Romantic anguish, or desires, are set off within seconds via texts. Consumer fulfillment is stretched like taffy whenever we check tracking services on an order. If you endure the returns process waiting in line at the post office, or Amazon returns location, it becomes a sentence on a desert island. Never will the two points of fulfillment meet.

The 2024 Election Through the Eyes of a Nineteenth-Century Historian

Tocqueville’s book on the French Revolution is less known in our country than his larger book chronicling American social character. In this era of “America First!” it makes sense that we prefer to read about ourselves. Ancien Régime and the Revolution, though, contains political arguments more important to our time because ours is a time of seismic political change.

Mind the Gap: Tracking the Distance Between Forest Park Today and Filipino “Human Zoos” of the 1904 World’s Fair

Immigrants seeking refuge in the country responsible for their humanitarian crisis is not new. Particularly for America. What was new, however, was the largest human zoo in the world modeled in our own backyard, two years after the Philippine-American war ended.

The Asian Women Named Mary

Witness the “woman” of “Asian descent.” Is this the face of waiting? Of looking? Of becoming? Of otherizing? Did she shuffle to the chair before sitting? Did she walk quickly?

Some Pain, Some Gain

Science says that pain, done right, confers marked benefits. The trick, as in so many realms of life, is finding the right spot on the spectrum between what is chronic and what is manageable.

This Sporting Life is Cinema’s Ultimate Portrait of Manhood

Watching ‘This Sporting Life,’ the viewer marvels at how Machin keeps on “winning” at every turn yet still fails to find the elusive victory he craves.

The Strangeness in Us

When I was little, I had a recurring nightmare. I would float to the laundry room, a small tiled room next to the kitchen, and open the door. Or try to. I would push the door handle down, throw my body against the wood but it would not budge, only wobble a bit as if something else pushed back. Then wind or an unseen hand would seize and suspend me in the air.

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