Clifford Thompson

Who is winning the old nature-versus-nature debate? Which of these influencers has the upper hand? Are we mostly preprogrammed, acting out what has been inside us since Day One, or do we go in the direction life blows us?

As I write this essay, I am listening to Bird’s records. I love the inventiveness, the breakneck pace, and the flights of fancy of his melodies. I admire his daring and ingenuity, just as I do the Wright brothers’ daring and ingenuity: over a century after they occurred, it is thrilling to read accounts of their first successful powered flights.

    Nichelle Nichols, who died on July 30 at age 89, exemplified two things for me. One involves acting, and to discuss that, it is necessary to say a little about Star Trek, the TV series on which she played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura—her best-known role. Star Trek may be unique in its mix of […]

Comic Art and African Americans

Two new books, in many ways vastly different, take on the history of Blacks in American comics—one discussing the work of more celebrated cartoonists of the last century or so, the other focusing on previously hidden figures.

A lot of people love the feel and freedom of driving—certainly our culture celebrates those things—but those were outweighed for me by other factors, chief among them the astounding ease with which I can get lost.

I had been surprised days earlier when I found gray fur on one of the traps, from a now partially bald mouse who had a story to tell his many buddies, but here was something worse: not an uncaught rodent, but a half-caught rodent.

The magic trick that Chast performs in her cartoons is to make laughter out of the dirty secret of life: it is an alternately stressful and humdrum affair, and then it is over.

For readers who are new in town, this volume is a tour through a Washington they will not learn about in any guidebook. For others, reading this collection is like, yes, flying home.

Does a man ever get over his father? Born into a Jewish family in New Haven in the summer of 1922, the second child and only boy, Norman Lear developed toward H.K. a reverence that withstood a great deal before souring, which it never did completely. Like Archie, H.K. was a large personality whose faults were proportional to the rest of him.

To say that the good Cosby has done outweighs the bad is, at best, to oversimplify matters and, at worst, to make a morally dubious statement. (Try saying that about a philanthropist who raped your sister, daughter, or wife.) It is of limited use, too, to say that we must always separate the artist from the art if we are to enjoy art at all. That is because, in this case, the person we took to be Cosby is—was?—his art. Maybe, maybe, it is possible to hang onto that persona, a positive force in the world, even as we know that it is the creation of that other Cosby; but between the two of them, they have broken my heart.

Earth, Wind & Fire turned the “Me Decade” upside down, inside out, and all around. Lead man Philip Bailey’s bio reveals the spirit behind the songs.

Working against sometimes clunky prose, but with an eye on posterity, Washington D.C.’s most (in)famous mayor tells his story of power, the temptations of power, and his legacy forgotten amidst scandal.

Despite moments of tone-deafness, the graphic novel treatment of Django animates the ethical puzzle of Tarantino’s film with static vigor, and color to spare.