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by Joe Hagan, New York Magazine
This is Dan Rather's last big story, his crusade to save his reputation as one of the late-twentieth century's great TV newsmen. But with much unproved, Rather's claims have left him standing alone.
by Richard B Woodward, Guardian
Film noir plots often hinge on secrets and guilt, sexual fixation and ambiguity, and these same elements riddled Raymond Chandler's life in the view of biographer Judith Freeman.
by Paul Quinn, Telegraph
James Fenton has been shot at, kidnapped, forced to eat his own dog and even dabble din West End musicals. He's also the most talented poet of his generation.
by Josh Levin, Slate
Engraving "N/A" onto a crystal football might look ridiculous. What's far sillier is the sports world's fixation on looking out for No. 1. Consider: The pulitzer boar doften decides that no play, novel, or syphony is deserving of its yearly honors. The Nobel Prize also on occasion goes unawarded.
by Terry Eagleton, Guardian
Dissent and emancipation were holy for William Blake. He could teach our prime minister so much about how to be radical.
by Melena Ryzik, New York Times
Though the television series ended its six-year run on HBO in 2004, many viewers follow it on DVD or in syndication here and abroad. For them "Sex and the City" is a continuing affair, one that still envelops New York with the promise of liberation through trapeze lessons, bottomless cosmopolitans and will-they-or-won't-they sex.
by Dorsey Kindler, San Francisco Chronicle
As the international correspondent for Vanity Fair, Langewiesche is one of the best magazine journalists at work today.
by Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
Published, astonishingly, almost exactly two years after the stock market crash of October 1929 that wrote a conclusive finis to the decade, the book "Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's" immediately proved at once a useful antidote to '20s romanticism and proof positive that this was indeed a remarkable and unique period in U.S. history.
by Rachel Aviv, Poetry Foundation
Who wrote "Footprints"?
by Ingrid Chung, 2River View
by Lynne Potts, 2River View
by Joanne Dominique Dwyer, APR
by Tomas Q. Morin, Slate
by Jonathan Glancey, Guardian
The New York Times Building isn't just a striking new home for the paper - it's the city's best skyscraper in 40 years.
by Richard Kenney, New Yorker
by Marisa Silver, New Yorker
by Michael Specter, New Yorker
Why are evolutionary biologists bringing back extinct deadly viruses?
by Seamus Heaney, Guardian
An economy of means, a sense of stillness and transience, Japanese poetry shares many of the qualities of Old Irish verse. English poetry had much to learn from both traditions.
by Walter Kirn, New York Times
Run down to the bar and rouse the culture editor: the imposible has happened. n the dispiriting age of Bush and Britney, with our military still bogged down in Baghdad and our media stil lbewitched by Beverly Hills, an accomplished, respected American writer (a recent National Book Award Winner, in fact) has published a serious patriotic novel.
by Motoko Rich, New York Times
Is all hope gone, or will people still be drawn to the literary landscape? And what is it, exactly, that turns someone into a book lover who keeps coming back for more?
by Janet Maslin, New York Times
In his awkward new book abotu a particularly unapetizing criminal, John Leake struggles to make a case for the egomaniac he has studied.
by Sandy Boucher, San Francisco Chronicle
There are three Dr. Lees in my life.
by Edward Rothstein, New York Times
The newly published Sixth Edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary reflects the transformations unfolding in the unabridged third edition of the O.E.D.
by Gary Kamiya, Salon
More than a third of black Americans no longer believe that blacks are a single race. This finding has alarmed some — but it could help America out of its racial mess.
by James Richardson, New Yorker
by Meghan Daum, Los Angeles Times
Thanks to a new electronic device, it may become impossible to judge people by their (book) covers.
by Jan Moir, Financial Times
Chef Alain Ducasse on why he's fond of McDonald's, steamed tofu and serving raspberries in November.
by The Economist
A history of British food.
by Jodi Kantor, New York Times
Running for president is like entering a competitive eating contest and a beauty pageant all at once. Candidates are expected to eat local specialities often and with gusto, yet still look attractive and fit.
by Jeffrey Kluger, Time
If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity woul dnot lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn't lie int he transcendent goodness of that mind—one so sublime, we fold it into a larger "soul." The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, on person, often in one instant.
by Jennifer Yael Green, The Stranger
But I read a great book about Africa while I was there.
by David Mas Masumoto, Los Angeles Times
A organic farmer has some food fantasies. One of them is quality over quantity.
by Norman Mailer, Esquire
In November 1960, Norman Mailer first tried his hand at a genre that would come to define his career. This is Mailer's debut into the world of political journalism, a sprawling classic examining John F. Kennedy.
by Kim Severson, New York Times
It is one thing for the president of the United States to pardon a pair of turkeys every year and then send them off to live out their days in Florida. It's quite another to save a turkey from the Thanksgiving table by inviting it to live with you.
by Kevin Berger, Salon
Britain's No Music Day offers a welcome hush over a noisy world. It can't come to America soon enough.
by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair
When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.
by Idra Novey, Slate
by Keith Phipps, Slate
Take a closer look at Close Encounters, particularly if you haven't seen the movie in a while, and you realize the movie has a rather un-Spielbergian subtext.
by Benedict Carey, New York Times
Recent studies from fields as divserse as psychology and anthropology suggest that the ability to look the other way, while potentially destructive, is also critically important to forming and nourishing close relationship.
by Adam Zagajewski, New Yorker
by Roberto Bolano, New Yorker
by Nora Ephron, New Yorker
When they got home that night, she went to get the book. She'd ordered it earlier in the week and meant to read it before they went to the movie, but it was a hard week and things got away from her. THis was happening more and more.
Maybe if we look in the book we'll be able to figure it out, she said.
by Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
Great empires were extraordinarily pluralistic, argues Amy Chua, until they frayed into xenophobia and decline. Can the U.S. steer another course?
by Louise Gluck, New Yorker
by Finlo Rohrer, BBC News
Forget the modern updates, this Christmas you may find yourself getting a little literary slice of the 1950s.
by David Kamp, New York Times
Eric Lax's new book of interviews with Woody Allen, along with recent collections of Allen's fiction and prose, helps burnish the director's legacy.
by Virginia Heffernan, New York Times
Nothing in the children's entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hoppped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times.
by Jon Mooallem, New York Times
Sleep may finally be claiming its place beside diet and exercise as both a critical health issue and a niche for profitable consumer products.
by Erica C. Barnett, The Stranger
Roads and transit is dead. Long live light rail!
by Nancy Gibbs, Time
But if the perfect average is a mirage, you can still learn something by comparing yourself to the crowd.
by The Economist
Recession in America looks increasingly likely. Can booming emerging markets save the world economy?
by Beth Quinn Barnard, New York Times
With all those miles to drive and five whole days to do it, I figured letting go of Nellie would be a breeze.
by Lisa Belkin, New York Times
It's offiical: nothing is sacred. At least two insurers have added the "cancel for work reasons" option to a travel insurance plan.
by Daniel Terdiman, CNET News.com
If it wasn't for Pez, the theory goes, there would be no eBay.
by Robert Draper, National Geographic Magazine
Conditions are tough, the pay is lousy, and there is no quittin' time. So why do cowboys love their job?
by Elizabeth Larsen, Mother Jones
The answers are never easy when you enter the labyrinth of global adoption.
by Marina Warner, The Liberal
Writers don't make up myths; they take them over and recast them. Even Homer was telling stories that his audience already knew.
by David Brown, Washington Post
Everyone who goes to medical school hears this story at some point. Graduation day comes and the new doctors assemble to get their diplomas. The dean gazes out and announces sheepishly: "I'm sorry to tell you that half of what we taught you is wrong. The problem is, we don't know which half."
Nowhere has this been more evident than in genetics.
by Julia Moskin, New York Times
Having recently mashed 32 pounds of potatoes over a three-day period, I can say that they are good cooked in plain water, in salted water and in water mixed with milk, wine or chicken stock.
by Feargus O'Sullivan, The Guardian
What is the most famous food scene in all cinema? Could it be Samuel L Jackson interrogating the men he's been hired to kill about European hamburgers and the metric system in Pulp Fiction? Or might it be Debbie Reynolds jumping out of a cake to do the charleston in Singin' in the Rain? Hannibal Lecter's serving suggestions for humanliver in The Silence of the Lambs is among Hollywood's best-remembered lines, while dedicated foodies might plump for any of the scenes celebrating food connoisseurship or gluttony in Babette's Feast or La Grande Bouffe. Ever since I learned as a teenager that the blood spiralling down the plughole in the shower scene from Psycho was actually chocolate sauce, I've been intrigued by the way food is portrayed on screen.
by Michael Longley, New Yorker
by Antonya Nelson, New Yorker
by Frank Bidart, Slate
by Tama Janowitz, New York Times
One thing I figure, whether adopted, mixed race, religious, non-religious, whethe ryour child is biological, whether you send her to Hebrew school or piano lessons — there is no one who does not resent his or her parents. We all have this in common. Indeed, it may be what makes us human.
by Carl Zimmer, New York Times
If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain D. Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult — to the ants.
Ameicans spend a 3.7 million hours a year in congested traffic. But you never see ants stuck in gridlock.
by Rachel Axler, New York Times
Before I leave, I take care not to tidy my desk too much. I even leave a cup of water by the keyboard. Not like it'll have time to evaporate! Monday morning I'll be back here and we'll all laugh at our paranoia. Laugh and laugh and laugh.
by Franz Wright, New Yorker
by Ty Burr, Boston Globe
Getting loudly outraged over blackface may allow us the luxury of feeling superior to our ancestors, but it's the easy way out. More difficult and more necessary is actually looking at a practice with roots deep in American history, one that had different meanings to the white mainstream, to immigrants, and to the African-Americans who turned it to their own expressive purposes. Only by understanding blackface can we recognize where we haven't progressed; only then can we see the places where blackface still thrives in our culture, disguised and still potent.
by Liza Mundy, Washington Post
THey lost their daughters in the deadliest cmpus massacre in U.S. history. Now one parent thinks a lawsuit might be the only way to hold someone accountable for her death, while the other believes it would only prolong their pain.
by Annie Kassof, San Francisco Chronicle
I couldn't help reflecting on my new version of the symbolism of this nightly routine.
by Alison Lobron, Boston Globe
Ok, maybe not easy. But today's gay high schoolers are discovering that declaring their homosexuality — and doing it at younger and younger ages — brings little of the stigma and complications that earlier generations faced.
by Brad Stone, New York Times
Scott Adams, the "Dilbert" creator and the progenitor of the multimillion-dollar Dilbert empire, is now a pointy-haired boss himself.
by Louis Menand, New Yorker
No one would say of Norman Mailer, who died on November 10th, at the age of eighty-four, that he oarded his gift. He was a slugger. He swung at everything, and when he missed he missed by a mile and sometimes endd up on his tush, but when he connected he usually knocked itout of hte park. He was immodest about his failures and modest about his successes, which is a healthy trait for a writer and probably a healthy trait for life. He left a huge footprint on American letters.
by Chrystia Freeland, Financial Times
Living in a time when it is OK to show footage of a cavorting model in a bikini and call it business news does pose a couple of challenges for the ordinary working girl.
by The Economist
America should keep its cool about the technological threat posed by China and India.
by Emma Campbell Webster, Guardian
Romantic comedies often close with a wedding, implying that marriage is 'the end' of all adventure. Does this message encourage women to stay single?
by Deborah Schoeneman, New York Times
Looking for someone to curate your life? Need a personal concierge whose expertise is not picking up dry-cleaning but helping chose your wardrobe, your tastes, your friends? Ms. Storr calls herself a personal manager, but her duties go far beyond that. Her clients, all of them men, pay monthly fees of $4,000 to $10,000 to have her be their personal decider in nearly all things lifestyle-related.
by Carla Power, Time
Reams have been written on the differences between Islamic and Western societies, but for sheer pithiness, it's hard to beat a quip by my former colleague, a Pakistani scholar of Islamic studies. I'd strolled into his office one day to find him on the floor, at prayer. I left, shutting his door, mortified. Later he cheerfully batted my apologies away. "That's the big difference between us," he said with a shrug. "You Westerners make love in public and pray in private. We Muslims do exactly the reverse."
by Brian Miller, Seattle Weekly
Between the kitty litter and the toothpaste, on a lonely aisle of your supermarket, they cry out for love. Highlander Untamed! Unleash the Night! To Pleasure a Prince! The Boss's Wife for a Week! Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded! Carrying an average price of $7.42, these paperbacks are cheap and hardly literary, yet carefully crafted by an industry that annually produces some 6,000 titles.
by Kenneth Chang, New York Times
Chefs are using science not only to better understand their cooking, but also to create new ways of cooking.
by Jeff Gammage, New York Times
When my wife and I arrived in Gansu Province to adopt our second daughter, Zhao Gu, we were shocked to find two bits of tantalizing information — one a hope, the other a mystery — embedded in the paperwork.
by Charlotte Allen, Weekly Standard
Who killed Antioch College?
by Tom Sleigh, Slate
by Yusef Komunyakaa, New Yorker
by Alice Mattison, New Yorker
by Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker
Criminal profiling made easy.
by John Noble Wilford, New York Times
The discovery of thriving communities of survivors at the end of the Cretaceous is giving some scientists second thoughts about the extinction's causes and effects.
by Liz Widdicombe, New Yorker
"It's simple, but the originality is to recognize that it's happening."
by Jean Valentine, New Yorker
by Denise Winterman, BBC News
We waste too much food and should return to the way we lived during the war, says a new campaign. It would save us money and help save the planet.
by Rachel Donadio, New York Times
Few major living authors have a biography in progress. And that's just what most writers — and many biographers — prefer.
by Desson Thomson, Washington Post
Let the credits and the tears roll. Aren't movies — sniff — grand?
by Nicholas Lemann, Los Angeles Times
Orwell thought that better writing would lead to better politics; he was partially right.
by Clark Hoyt, New York Times
How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in coarse, bullying and misinformed ways?
by Joel Garreau, Washington Post
Aubrey de Grey may be wrong but, evidence suggests, he's not nuts. This is a no small assertion. De Grey arguest that some people alive today will live in a robust and youthful fashion for 1,000 years.
by Belinda Luscombe, Time
The women of America need you. Badly. Have you ever been in the changing room of the lingerie section of a major department store? O.K., don't answer that. But I've been there, and I'll tell you, it ain't pretty.
by Lindy West, The Stranger
"Suicide food" is any depiction of animals that act as though they wish to be consumed," explains Ben Grossblatt in the mission statement of Suicide Food (suicidefood.blogspot.com), his blog and mild ethical obsession. "Suicide food actively participates in or celebrates its own demise. Suicide food identifies with the oppressor. Suicide food is a bellwether of our decadent society. Suicide food is not funny."
by Edward McClelland, Salon
America's competitive spirit has been wrecked by feel-good amateurs like Oprah whose only goal is to stagger across the finish line.
by Amos Oz, Los Angeles Times
I believe in literature as a bridge between peoples. I believe curiosity can be a moral quality. I believe imagining the other can be an antidote to fanaticism. Imagining the other will make you not only a better busnessperson or a better lover but even a better person.
by Henry Petroski, Slate
The marketing genius who brought us the toothpick.
by Josh Levin, Slate
An avid sports fan can now read Sports Illustrated without learning anything new.
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