Where Everybody Knows Your Name

I roll my eyes at people who are smug about ordering off-menu and having their whims catered to. But that is exactly what those Fridays represented: a chance to go someplace where we were known, our whims catered to.

Whoopi Goldberg and Why Blacks See Jews in the Way They Do

Goldberg's views about Jews and race have nothing to do with the Holocaust or Nazi Germany and everything to do with Blacks and Jews in the United States.

The Tragedy of Macbeth: A Review

No matter how many times one revisits the story, it is always surprising how quickly Macbeth turns from loyal servant to regicide. All it takes is the suggestion that it is meant to be, that in some sense it has already happened, for him to jump into action and do the unthinkable.

Swing Time

Swing gave us back a little joy after the market crashed. Swing kept up our spirits as we entered a grim war. What is accessible is not always dumb or devoid of talent; sometimes it is just something we can all share. There is less and less of that, these days, and we need it desperately.

Nellie Bly, the Heroine Nobody Hears About

Elizabeth Jane Cochran, actually. Nellie Bly was her pseudonym. She landed her first newspaper job by writing a furious letter to the editor, words leaping off the page to slap a misogynist columnist. This was in 1885. Then she moved to New York and spent four penniless months persuading Joseph Pulitzer to hire her at the New York World.

Fifty Songs Featuring Cities and Urban Life

For almost every metropolis—and even a few towns—with streets, neighborhoods, and businesses there is a song with melody, harmony, and a beat.

Books, Family, Loss, and Growth

Throughout Read Until You Understand Griffin entwines her personal account of life as a Black woman in America—tragic encounters with police, teachers who either misrepresent her or open her mind to new thoughts—with those books that underscore the way in which her life functions as a synecdoche for her Black, Philadelphian neighbors.

From Yiddish Theater Actor to Mainstream Film Auteur

Maura Spiegel’s approach simultaneously favors the intimate and the sensational, painting a portrait of America’s most unassuming cinematic auteur that emphasizes both his workaday normalcy and the rarified place he occupies in the nation’s artistic and cultural landscape. It is an unabashedly hagiographic work.

Fifty Songs Featuring Cities and Urban Life

For almost every metropolis—and even a few towns—with streets, neighborhoods, and businesses there is a song with melody, harmony, and a beat.

Los Diablos Tejanos: An Honest Look at the Texas Rangers

The Texas Rangers are held up as an emblem of Texas exceptionalism, the American protectors in the wild west. First appearing in cinema in 1910, they were depicted as handsome saviors galloping into town to implement law and order in the dusty wake of their stallions’ hooves. For Tejano communities inside Texas and along the border, however, the Texas Rangers were private agents of Anglo terror, responsible for little-known acts of violence that only now are being told.

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