James Traub’s short biography of Judah Benjamin is a fine, highly accessible introduction not only to Benjamin but to the subject of southern Jews, their relationship to the Confederacy, and their experience as slaveholders.
So many people got involved, for so many different reasons, that protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline was (nearly) a blank template. This gave many opportunities for conflict and few firm measures of success, except oil never flowing in the pipeline.
One of the few points of agreement left to us is that our whole culture is “oversensitive” now—that favorite castigation—though in different directions, canceling and banning and vilifying. We are miserable about it, here in this land that lauds bold and fearless action.
The American-Mexican novelist and author of Prayers for the Stolen, adapted for Netflix, reflects on women’s rights, the beauty and danger of life in Mexico, and being “the granddaughter of surrealism.”
John F. Kennedy was a twentieth-century man and a twentieth-century politician but he seemed like fresh air and change because of his youth and verve. Logevall’s biography adds to the literature that students and history buffs can use to judge for themselves.
In Savage Messiah, Laura Grace Ford stands in the best of the “psychogeographer” lineage, at turns practical and imaginative, concrete and incendiary.
What is a “good” night’s sleep, anyway? Like pornography, we know it when we experience it, waking happy and bright, stretching luxuriantly.
Borders are curious things. They change. Those who benefit claim that the new borders are set in stone; those who lose claim the old borders were set in stone. And in time, the borders will change again, perhaps benefiting a third party.
In 1962 Michael Harrington’s "The Other America: Poverty in the United States" was published. It was truly one of those remarkable books that fundamentally changed the nature of the debate. Like Rachel Carson’s "Silent Spring" published the same year, it managed to draw attention to a significant but largely unrecognized threat to the country.
Even carved in wood, the cuckoo is a mess of contradictions. The man credited for inventing it in 1730 was not even born until four years later, and there is a description of a mechanical cuckoo that dates to 1629. Though the classic Swiss chalet version of the cuckoo clock is now iconic, the first popularizations were made in Germany’s Black Forest and bore hunting scenes.