Ben, Author at Common Reader

Enter the Dragon

Timothy Egan’s engaging account is simple: D. C. Stephenson, who would become the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, was the archetypical stranger who came to town one day, in this case Evansville, Indiana, in 1922. Stephenson built the Klan in Indiana with good marketing. He made the Klan stand for virtue: strong White families, temperance, and godliness. He was very successful in recruiting churches. He was a smart organizer, getting law enforcement to join in great numbers as well as low-level politicians. Then, he kidnapped a woman who worked for him.

Reviews

On Top with The Four Tops

By Carlehr Swanson

Duke Fakir’s life determination radiates throughout I’ll Be There: My Life With The Four Tops. From arriving early in high school, hustling up the group's first uniforms, managing the group's funds, and now preserving the group’s legacy.

Essays | Reviews

Tales from a Train

By Jeannette Cooperman

Riding coach on Amtrak today is more like taking a nice bus. No doubt I will arrive weary, disillusioned and, as the Victorians put it, “travel-stained.”

Essays

Ten Best Poems of the Past Ten Years

By Nathaniel Rosenthalis

Funeral sermons for poetry seldom discuss, in detail, a single poem. This is a problem of reception, not of poesis, or making. I offer, here, under a perhaps too-pithy conceit, the antidote: a hyper-close, even seemingly rudimentary, close reading of ten poems from the past ten years that I believe offer glimpses of the most vital work in today’s poetry.

Essays

The Elephant on the Patio

By Jeannette Cooperman

I have watered this plant copiously, backed off watering, fed her miracles, scooted her huge pot inch by inch toward more light. I feel like an ardent suitor who cannot win my love’s heart.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

The Slow Joy of Guarding the Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Jeannette Cooperman

Bringley’s gift is to make the scholarly approachable—and delightful. In that decade at the Met, he developed a method. Rather than hunt for some extraordinary characteristic highlighted by the experts, he does nothing, just stares, spending those first minutes in a work of art’s presence by absorbing all he can without attaching any initial judgment, and he refuses to worry about what the art-world elite think.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Slouching Toward Chatbots

By Jeannette Cooperman

In some ways, we seem to want AI to replace us. Or at least to replace the people too foolish to fall in love with us or too impatient to adore our flaws.

Science & Nature | Dispatches

Seeing The Doctor

By Jeannette Cooperman

“The Doctor” mocks identity politics even as it turns them against us, casting women as men and White actors as Black characters. After years of all of us choosing up sides, art proves the project impossible.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

The Case for Travel

By Jeannette Cooperman

Travel, done with an open heart, stitches new connections. It is a way to not feel lonely.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

Old—and New—New York

By Jeannette Cooperman

Few of us know New York inside-out. That means we are all in this together, looking hard, following breadcrumbs and tips and our GPS. I inhale deeply and realize the city runs on coffee and cannabis.

Uncategorized | Dispatches