France Adventure History Graham Robb

Making Merry Adventure from Sophisticated French History

France: An Adventure History remains, from cover to cover, a truly different history. It is long and densely packed with knowledge, just not told in a traditional narrative.

Clifford Thompson Big Man and the Little Men

The Trumpian Miasma in Words and Pictures

Big Man and the Little Men is less about the destination of the election result and more about the journey—what we can learn about people’s relationships, motivations, opinions, and beliefs.

Nudist

Naked beneath Our Clothes

Nothing is new, shocking, revelatory. All the lumps and bumps, moles and birthmarks, scars and stretch marks are on display, and the need to conceal your own drops away. Nakedness, done right, has no ego.

The Magical Metropolis of Our Dreams Becomes a Real Ghost Town

Given several decades, money, and a certain angle on history perhaps planned cities can and do work on some level, and for certain people. The problem with politicians’ well-laid plans is that they rarely work for anyone but the well-off.

When Advertising Gloms on to Disaster

Whatever you might think about advertising as an engine of the market economy, it is often juxtaposed with death in the media, nowhere more than online, and it is a symptom. It is a relief to lie in my bed at night and read the print issue, which I got as if by the publisher’s afterthought in a discount deal for my online subscription.

What Do Women Want? Ask Colleen Hoover

The success of Hoover’s books reminds me how prissy and bourgeois I am. Hoover’s fans say her work leaves them speechless, in tears, happy wrecks.

Evil Finds Horror in the Everyday—Then Laughs at It

The show’s first stroke of genius is the team’s camaraderie. In a time when we dare not even hint at our beliefs to a stranger, “Evil” gives us three people with entirely different world views who—here is the miracle—respect one another’s points of view.

Why Dawn of the Dead is the Seventies’ Ultimate Coming-of-Age Movie

“Dawn of the Dead” turns life and death upside down. Life is a stress-soaked struggle to survive, while death is a lurching, subconscious walk through old, submerged impulses until you die again—by firearm, machete, or blunt force. And why do people refuse to die? Because they want to go shopping.

Visiting the Apple Orchard a Return to Eden—With Donuts

Gathering food locally at a local pace with local technology may not be quite as convenient in some cases, but it roots us more firmly in our own lives. This, I think, is the subconscious delight of visiting a local apple orchard in fall.

When Coral Reefs Die, Even the Midwest Loses

If one of us goes days without food, the blood drains from our face, and we collapse. Without a meal, soon, we will die. Coral’s widespread bleaching signals the same fate.

Skip to content