It’s Alive!
Frankenstein bicentennial
Essays
The Recycling of Recycling
As more and more cities work toward zero-waste initiatives, it is important to review what is happening to municipal recycling programs right now. The future of recycling seems less “brave, new world,” and potentially more challenging and ripe for innovation.
City Mouse, Country Mouse
Larry and I met years ago in the cubicle-pen of a Fortune-1000 company. Looking back, our separate paths through jobs and geographies now seem to have meandering coherency.
The Painful Persistence of Pruitt-Igoe’s Long Goodbye
Some places record the rise and fall of a significant building, or evoke historical events that took place there. Others, like the site where the notorious St. Louis public housing complex known as Pruitt-Igoe once stood, serve less as memorials than material imprints of loss and unresolved histories.
Seasons of the Southpaw
The basic facts are here, from Spahn’s upbringing in Buffalo to his last year in baseball with the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants, as well as some useful quotes but there are two problems with Freedman's book.
Essay of the Month: “How to Become a Man of Genius”
“It is a mistake to suppose that a man must be either a cynic or an idealist. Both of them have as a common basis of belief the conviction that mankind as it really is is hateful.”
Melodrama and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage
Collins provides an uplifting narrative about how a same-sex romantic partnership is validated by the government and comes to hold a more respectful and comfortable place among friends, family, and the larger community. Setbacks are setbacks. Wins are wins. Hopes and fears are clear.
Pow! Bam! Biff! Tales of the Comic Book Wars
Slugfest is a fun book for anyone interested in comic books, in American popular culture generally, or in the obsessive and sometimes pathological nature of business competition. But it is not the incisive book about this industry that still awaits its author.
The Riots Goin’ On
The civil disturbances of 1968 signaled a nation that threatened to tear itself asunder but, significantly, Ferguson became a harbinger for a movement against state violence and a conversation about policing because it had become more militarized, not only because it could be brutal or highly insensitive in dealing with African Americans.
The Ballad of Lopez Obrador
This was not the first presidential campaign in which Lόpez Obrador had been in the lead. It was just the first one in which he held it.