Dr. Patrick D. Hazard was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he was found in an abandoned Kellogg’s Corn Flakes carton. His Ph.D. (1957) is interdisciplinary in American Civilization: two fields in Am Lit, his specialty; Am Art and Architecture, Am Philosophy and its European antecedents; Am Economic History.
He has a special interest in the humanities and mass media, for which he held a Ford Fellowship in New York (1955-56),where he became radio TV editor of Scholastic Teacher 1955-61), Carnegie Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania 1957-59 to create a new course on “The Mass Society” for the Department of American Civilization (1957-59), wrote the first curriculum of the Annenberg School of Communications at Penn (1959-61), where he taught the history of mass media, until appointed first director of the Institute of American Studies at the East West Center, U. of Hawaii, Honolulu (1961-62), and taught Am Lit, film, and media at Arcadia U,1962-82, after which he took early retirement to begin a second career as a cultural critic.
He has written for newspapers in Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Butte, Salt Lake City, Santa Rosa, San Francisco, Oakland, Tokyo, and London. His work has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, American Heritage, Variety, Asahi Evening News, and The European. He has done radio for NPR, advised Time Life and Encyclopedia Films which BBC films to distribute in America, and wrote a quarterly summary for Contrasts, the TV magazine of British Film. He has appeared on two TV series for University of the Air, WFIL-TV,Philadelphia.
For the past ten years he has lived in Weimar, Germany, where he has a German wife, Hildegard, and a 17-month-old son, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Hazard. He has just finished a book on Walter Gropius, Bauhaus: Myths and Realities. He is now working on an autobiography, Dumb Irish Luck: A Memoir of Serendipities, and an anthology of 50 years of his thinking, Hazard-at-Large”: A Humanist in Mass Culture, 1955-2005.
| The Third World in America |
June 11 2013 |
Can today’s global conflicts be disguised as love stories? Yes, and very effectively, when the lovers are Nigerians or Pakistanis studying at Ivy League universities.
Americanah. By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Knopf, 2013. 496 pages; $26.95. www.amazon.com.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist. By Mohsin Hamid. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. 192 pages; $5.86. www.amazon.com.
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| One simple idea to save humanity |
May 04 2013 |
Just when you’ve given up hope for the future of humanity, along comes someone like John Wood to demonstrate why problems can be solved. The key isn’t money or political power but imagination and optimism.
Room to Read. 111 Sutter Street, San Francisco CA 94104. (415) 839-4400 or www.roomtoread.org.
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| Denise Scott Brown, ignored for a Pritzker |
April 27 2013 |
As architects, Robert Venturi and his wife/partner Denise Scott Brown did everything together. But he alone received the esteemed Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1991. That’s a reflection on the profession’s sexism and the Pritzker’s archaic notions about how architects work.
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| Who needs architecture school? |
April 19 2013 |
From Louis Sullivan to Frank Lloyd Wright, some of the world’s most creative modern architects never went to architecture school, and some never went to college. They got the hang of good design on the job by watching pros do it— and then they did it, their way.
Albert Kahn: Inspiration for the Modern. Brian Carter, ed. University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2001. 76 pages; $209. www.amazon.com.
Time and Tim Remembered. Milton T. Pflueger, ed. Pflueger Architects, 1985. 150 pages’ $49.49. www.amazon.com.
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| A Dan Hoffman memory |
April 02 2013 |
The late Dan Hoffman, my favorite Philadelphia poet, was the kind of poet that Walt Whitman asked Americans to cherish.
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| Toyo Ito: the humane architect |
March 26 2013 |
What have our starchitects done for the common man? Very little. But the recent recognition of Toyo Ito suggests that the tide may yet turn.
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| Gross National Happiness: A global debate |
December 25 2012 |
Beyond a certain threshold, rising incomes don’t bring greater happiness. But what can governments do— other than economic development— to promote happiness? One answer is emerging, of all places, in the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan.
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| Who owns antiquity? |
November 20 2012 |
The great sculptures and relics of antiquity last forever, in the right hands. They properly belong to the global community. In that case, is it really wise to entrust them to politicians whose nations may not survive this century?
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| China’s Nobel laureate, reconsidered |
November 12 2012 |
The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Mo Yan has unleashed patriotic celebrations in China. Which leaves just one question: Has anyone actually read his novel?
Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (2006). By Mo Yan; translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt. Arcade Publishing, 2012. 552 pages; $16.95. www.amazon.com.
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| My problem with Junot Diaz’s ‘Oscar Wao’ |
October 30 2012 |
I’ve spent decades arguing that Americans must expand their literary horizons beyond our narrow shores. So I was pleased by the honors bestowed upon Oscar Wao, by the Dominican novelist Junot Diaz. Then I had the misfortune of actually reading this mindless book.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. By Junot Diaz. Penguin, 2007. 339 pages, $24.95. www.us.penguingroup.com.
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| Learning to love William Morris |
October 13 2012 |
The 19th-Century British arts and crafts innovator William Morris is being honored in London. High time I appreciated a medievalist whom I used to despise for all the wrong reasons.
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| Louis Kahn’s last masterpiece |
September 22 2012 |
Louis Kahn, a great, humble and idealistic architect, died broke and obscure in 1974. But his vision continues to bear fruit, most recently in New York City’s new Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park.
Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. Roosevelt Island, New York City. www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org.
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| What my five-year-old could teach the Tea Party |
September 14 2012 |
What can an octogenarian father possibly learn from his five-year-old son? If the subject is human evolution, the answer is: plenty.
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| Rediscovering Croatia |
August 31 2012 |
Tourism in Croatia has halved since its mindless war with Serbia. Those reluctant tourists are missing a stunning land and an equally stunning museum in the former home of one of the world’s greatest sculptors.
Ivan Mestrovic: The Making of a Master. By Maria Mestrovic. Stacey International, 2008. 317 pages; $33.50. www.amazon.com.
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| China’s surprise Pritzker winner |
March 06 2012 |
Unlike most celebrity architects, Wang Shu is concerned not with creating grand monuments but with what people want. Above all, that involves recycling old buildings and materials as a way of maintaining continuity from past to future.
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| My wild adventures in poetry |
February 12 2012 |
Tired of your boring, humdrum life? As I discovered, once you dip your toes into poetry, you could be off on the wildest ride of your life.
Poetry Magazine centennial. www.poetryfoundation.org.
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| Architecture: Five cents’ worth |
January 28 2012 |
Only 2% of American homes are architect-designed. But an innovative unemployed architect in Seattle may have found a way to make a living by servicing the other 98%. He could be the undoing of architecture’s infamous star system.
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| ‘DownBeat’ magazine at 75 |
December 04 2011 |
Sister John, my grimly serious music teacher, whomped my knuckles when I tried to imitate Harry James on trumpet. By contrast, Mahalia Jackson, Marshall Stearns and DownBeat Magazine introduced me to a world that still resonates today.
The Great Jazz Interviews: A 75th Anniversary Anthology. Frank Alkyer, Editor. Hal Leonard Books, 2009. 352 pages; $27.99. www.amazon.com.
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| The thrill of falconry |
November 28 2011 |
The elegance of trained falcons must be seen to be believed, as I did in Germany recently. But what is now merely an elegant entertainment was once a means of human survival for hunters and warriors.
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| Healing and history |
October 23 2011 |
The French, Germans and Poles used to be preoccupied with destroying each other. Now they’re obsessed with understanding and embracing each other, in a seemingly endless round of cultural exchanges, museum exhibitions and academic conferences. Is there a lesson here for angry Americans?
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| My ‘Time,’ ‘Life’ and ‘Fortune’ in Luceland |
October 11 2011 |
I was an eager-beaver academic with ambitions to change society, until my chutzpah landed me in a far more fertile intellectual stew: Henry Luce's Time Inc. media empire in its heyday. My exhilarating experiences there persuaded me that the best hope for raising society's cerebral standards lies not with academics but with media innovators like Luce or, more recently, Steve Jobs.
The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. By Alan Brinkley. Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. 560 pages; $35.00. www.amazon.com.
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| Dorothy Parker beneath the surface |
September 10 2011 |
The more I blabbed about Dorothy Parker’s wit, the more I realized that I knew very little about her life before and after the Algonquin Round Table. Was I ever in for some biographical surprises.
The Portable Dorothy Parker. Edited by Marion Meade. Penguin Books, 1976. 640 pages; paperback, $20.00. www.amazon.com.
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| Poet Philip Levine's working-class credentials |
August 14 2011 |
Is America’s new poet laureate a champion of the underclass or an adolescent poseur who has made a shtick of identifying with abused workers?
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| Crystal Palace Syndrome: Modern architecture's first booboo |
August 07 2011 |
For ambitious modernist architects like Mies or Gropius or Le Corbusier, nothing launched one’s reputation quite like a gleaming glass factory or a groundbreaking flat-roof residence. Living or working in one of these disasters was another story.
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| Religious fanatics: Muslim vs. Christian |
March 19 2011 |
So you think Islamic jihadists have cornered the market on wild-eyed religious fundamentalists? The U.S. military is breeding a Christian crop all its own.
Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization. By Reza Aslan. Random House, 2010. 240 pages; $16 (paperback). www.amazon.com.
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| Remembering Louis Sullivan |
February 08 2011 |
The great architect Louis Sullivan is commonly known as the “father of American skyscrapers.” But some of his best works are his “Jewel Boxes”— the small-town Midwest bank buildings he designed amid the idealistic burst of the Progressive era. You can still see many of them for yourself, as I did.
Louis Sullivan: The Struggle For American Architecture. A film directed by Mark Richard Smith. DVD by Whitecap Films, 97 minutes, $25. louissullivanfilm.com/home.
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| Fareed Zakaria’s ‘Post-American World’ |
January 02 2011 |
America is no longer the world’s “shining city on the hill”— not because we’ve declined, but because the rest of the world is catching up. Fareed Zakaria’s book, like his life, suggests a positive solution for Americans: Instead of fretting about losing, let’s rejoin the human race.
The Post-American World. By Fareed Zakaria. Allen Lane, 2008. Paperback, 336 pages; $15.95. www.amazon.com.
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| Literature’s global future |
December 06 2010 |
Here we have a new subgenre of what I call International English: Africans interacting with white and black Americans. The way Mengestu weaves writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson and Tocqueville into his narratives of isolation and conflict is astonishing.
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. By Dinaw Mengestu. Riverhead Press, 2007. 240 pages; $22.95. www.amazon.com.
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| Herbert Gans imagines America in 2033 |
November 06 2010 |
As its title suggests, my old colleague Herbert Gans’s latest book is a hopeful and engaging imagined “history” of the first third of the 21st Century. It begins like a novel and ends as a series of clearly stated position papers on the issues that made George W. Bush’s presidency such a tragic American aberration.
Imagining America in 2033: How the Country Put Itself Together After Bush. By Herbert Gans. U. of Michigan Press, 2008. 224 pages; $19.95. www.amazon.com.
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| Peter Conn’s ‘The American 1930s’ |
October 16 2010 |
Penn professor Peter Conn’s The American 1930s is a scholarly wonder about a painful period. His perspective is more sociological than literary, and he misses little.
The American 1930s: A Literary History. By Peter Conn. Cambridge University Press, 2009. 280 pages; $28.99. www.amazon.com.
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| Wanda Sykes vs. Rush Limbaugh |
September 21 2010 |
The difference between Rush Limbaugh and Wanda Sykes is the latter’s freedom from hatred and putdowns. Rush stokes the fires of resentment, Wanda smiles her teasing ways to a collective giggle.
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| New cultural capital: Tallinn, Estonia |
August 10 2010 |
After centuries of oppression by everyone from Crusaders to Nazis to Communists, Estonians are free at last to pursue their own destiny. The result is a remarkable cultural outpouring in Tallinn, the capital. I’ve never seen so many first-rate museums.
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| Ben Yagoda’s ‘Memoir: A History’ |
June 01 2010 |
From George W. Bush to Facebook to Twitter, these days everyone is writing a memoir of some sort. Ben Yagoda catalogues the phenomenon from ancient times to the rest. But he left me wondering: Do we understand each other any better as a consequence?
Memoir: A History. By Ben Yagoda. Riverhead Books, 2009. 304 pages; $25.95. www.amazon.com.
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| Stephen Miller’s ‘Conversation’ |
May 11 2010 |
Stephen Miller traces the art of conversation from ancient Sumer to its high point in 18th-Century British coffee houses to its terminal phase in the age of TV, rap artists and the Internet— a gloomy conclusion to an engaging book.
Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. By Stephen Miller. Yale University Press, 2006. 336 pages; $32. yalepress.yale.edu.
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| The trouble with Frank Lloyd Wright |
April 06 2010 |
Let the record show: Frank Lloyd Wright was an architectural genius. And woe unto anyone who tries to live or work in one of his buildings. So why this continued blind worship?
Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward. Skira /Rizzoli, 2009. 360 pages, $75. www.amazon.com.
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| Dickstein’s ‘Dancing In the Dark’ |
March 30 2010 |
Morris Dickstein’s cultural history of the Great Depression has elevated our intellectual level several notches, revealing clearly and eloquently how the many pieces of a complex industrial culture fit together.
Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression. By Morris Dickstein. W.W. Norton, 2009. 624 pages; $29.95. www.amazon.com.
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| On hating Haiti |
February 27 2010 |
For two centuries, according to conventional wisdom, Haitians haven’t been able to get their act together. Perhaps. But if Americans are looking for culprits, we’d do well to look in the mirror.
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| Howard Zinn and Mary Daly: Up the academy |
January 30 2010 |
Howard Zinn and Mary Daly, who died last week, shared a penchant for challenging smug academic certainties. To college presidents and deans, they were perennial pests; to society’s underdogs, they exemplified what a free society is all about.
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| Is the English major dying out? |
January 23 2010 |
The Modern Language Association recently reported a dizzying drop in tenure-track academic jobs on American campuses. Professors who narrowly cling to the status quo and sneer at modern trends, foreign cultures and new media have only themselves to blame for this predicament.
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| ‘A New Literary History of America’ |
January 02 2010 |
From Vespucci to Obama, it’s the mesmerizing mix of old chestnuts and unseen treasures in A New Literary History of America that gives this communal blog its intellectual weight. And it triggers memories for this old American studies academic.
A New Literary History of America. By Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Harvard University Press, 2009. 1,095 pages; $49.95. www.newliteraryhistory.com.
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| An agnostic reconsiders Jesus |
December 26 2009 |
How does an agnostic ex-Catholic with a Lutheran German wife explain Western civilization to his three-year-old son? In my case, it helps to understand the events of the Bible, whether or not you believe them.
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| Malcolm Wells: Nature’s architect |
December 12 2009 |
Most famous architects impose their grand visions upon nature. Malcolm Wells, by contrast, subordinated his ego to nature.
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| Studs Terkel: The art of winging it |
November 02 2008 |
The empathic mensch interviewer Studs Terkel, who died on October 31, reached voraciously for life’s opportunities and rarely paused for breath. You don’t get to choose your parents, but I and thousand of others were blessed by Terkel’s tutelage. He taught me how to look and ask questions.
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| ‘Gee’s Bend: Architecture of the Quilt’ at Art Museum (2nd review) |
October 27 2008 |
Gee’s Bend, a tiny islet in the Alabama River, has justly earned an international reputation as a major center of black American creativity. But I was amazed at the raggedy condition of a third of these quilts.
“Gee’s Bend: Architecture of the Quilt.” Through December 14, 2008 at Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. (215) 763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/311.html.
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| Leipzig: The heady air of freedom |
September 30 2008 |
Leipzig took some of the meanest strokes of the late unlamented German Democratic Republic. What a difference a decade can make when such people awaken.
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| Discovering Dessau |
August 23 2008 |
Dessau had its moment of glory as the home of Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus in the 1920s. But this East German city today remains is a very modern city with great medieval credentials.
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| Letter from Iceland |
August 16 2008 |
Can Broad Street Review’s irrepressible octogenarian curmudgeon cheapskate professor survive a week alone in Iceland? Does a bear sleep in the woods? And if he can make Reykjavik into Paris, why not you?
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| Lost in Lyon |
July 29 2008 |
Don’t talk to me about the best-laid plans etc. I just spent 15 hours in Lyon during which all my pre-plans went completely awry— yet this pit stop was astonishingly productive. Of course it helps if you’re a retired professor with a gift of gab and a talent for making lemonade out of lemons.
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| ‘The Soloist,’ by Steve Lopez |
August 05 2008 |
On the world’s worst Skid Row, Steve Lopez discovers a newspaper columnist’s dream: a homeless psychotic Juilliard dropout who loves his suffering as much as his music. Lopez’s first venture into non-fiction is a wonder filled with rich subtleties.
The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music. By Steve Lopez. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008. 288 pages; $25.95.
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| Touring in Torino |
July 20 2008 |
The once gritty northern Italian industrial city of Turin has been transformed into a vibrant cultural center. Few Americans have discovered it yet. Our peripatetic cheapskate professor, Patrick D. Hazard, offers a few tips.
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| The ‘Prague Spring,’ 40 years later |
July 12 2008 |
Forty years after Soviet troops smothered the Prague Spring, the Soviet Union is dead and Prague itself has become an inexhaustible panorama of the liberating effects of freedom at work.
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| Professor’s tour: Arts in Berlin |
June 16 2008 |
Broke and desperate, our favorite mad professor and professional skinflint parlays his gall and ingenuity into two memorable days of cultural stimulation in Berlin, and urges you to do likewise.
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| Forgotten women of the Bauhaus |
May 13 2008 |
The legendary German Bauhaus school was a haven for revolutionary thinking in design and architecture. It was also a haven for pompous male chauvinists who habitually elbowed aside women of superior talent, not to mention common sense.
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| William H. Johnson at Art Museum (2nd review) |
May 26 2007 |
Back in the really bad old days, the ignorant called blacks "niggers" and the civilized called them "colored." Thanks to William H. Johnson, we now have a stunning record of those "colored" in lively colors.
“William H. Johnson’s World on Paper.” Through Aug. 12, 2007 at Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th Sr. and Benj. Franklin Parkway. (215) 763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org.
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| Student show at PAFA |
May 19 2007 |
At the Pennsylvania Academy’s annual student show, it was evident that this generation of artists has learned the Andy Warhol secret: Find a schtick and stick with it. Luckily, and oddly, the show's conclusion abuts a splendid collection of sculpture amassed over PAFA's two centuries of serious achievement.
106th Annual Student Exhibition. Through June 3, 2007, at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 128 N. Broad St. (at Cherry). 215-972-7600 or
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| Witold Rybczynski’s ‘Last Harvest’ |
May 15 2007 |
The joy of Witold Rybczynski’s 14th book lies in its explaining the almost heroic tasks of preparing land for builders to use. His teacher is his former student, now the head of a land development company.
Last Harvest: How a Cornfield became New Dalesville. Real Estate Development in America from George Washington to the Builders of the Twenty-first Century, and Why We Live in Houses Anyway. By Witold Rybczynski. 320 pages. Pete Dexter’s ‘Paper Trails’ |
April 17 2007 |
The tabloid columnist Pete Dexter has made half a career of insufferably cheap shots, not all of them very pertinent. He doesn’t grow on you the way Steve Lopez does. Still, you never know when he’s going to hit a home run.
Paper Trails: True Stories of Confusion, Mindless Violence, and Forbidden Desires, a Surprising Number of Which are Not About Marriage
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| The AIA slights Philadelphia architecture |
April 10 2007 |
To celebrate its 150th anniversary, the American Institute of Architects polled hundreds of amateurs to choose their 150 favorite American buildings. The result of this grossly defective methodology? Well, how do you like the Las Vegas Bellagio Hotel and Casino?
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| The singular life of George Seldes |
April 03 2007 |
From World War I to the Age of Nader, the outspoken Philadelphia journalist and critic George Seldes survived more than a century and managed to reach the finish line with his principles intact. How did he do it, and how can we emulate his example?
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| Religious relics |
March 10 2007 |
Once you start collecting relics, there's no stopping the imaginatively greedy. Now that the bones of Jesus and his family have been found, can his birth certificate and Social Security card be far behind? The Christian obsession with relics is really a pagan exercise, as the Council of Trent readily recognized in the 16th century.
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| Sex Ed, 21st-Century style |
February 20 2007 |
A reader has accused the editor of the Philadelphia City Paper of the grossest hypocrisy for in effect financing his high-toned editorial content with sex ads in the rear, so to speak, of his alternative paper. An 80-year-old sexual late bloomer suggests: Consider the alternatives.
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| Charles Saatchi’s on-line art gallery |
December 30 2006 |
Starving painters in frozen garrets? Not in Charles Saatchi’s brave new cyberspace world, where every art student can find fame, fortune and fellowship, regardless of talent.
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| 'Gross Clinic' post-mortem |
December 23 2006 |
The Gross Clinic brouhaha has forced us Philadelphians to confront the irresponsible ways we’ve been trashing our art heritage since the idealism of the Dilworth era cooled. Also the snootiness and dubious logic of our critics. One man's roundup of winners and losers.
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| Camille Paglia’s 'Salon' interview |
December 09 2006 |
I’ve been mesmerized by Paglia’s capacity to relate the most demotic aspects of our Pop Culture with very esoteric High Culture. She hangs out intellectually with the likes of Bill Maher and Matt Drudge as well as her Yalies. What a talk-show host she could be, if only NPR weren’t so timid.
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| The joy of obituaries |
December 09 2006 |
A good obituary not only makes you regret you never ran across its subject, but if it’s really good, you feel like, well, you almost did run into him. Here are some of my favorite sources.
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| Cool to Calders |
October 20 2006 |
Three generations of sculpting Calders are Philadelphia’s hidden pride and joy. The two most recent generations are another story. Here's a modest solution.
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| Art Museum anoints Frank Gehry |
October 20 2006 |
First the Art Museum opened its sacred space to Rocky. Now it’s inviting Frank Gehry, with his Computer Aided Design schtick. Let’s hear it for another egotist with a Jesus complex: This architect thinks he can turn water into wine.
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| Rocky wins a prose knockout |
September 06 2006 |
The Rocky statue has fought its way to the base of the Art Museum. Does that mean the barbarians are at the gate? This much is certain: They aren’t grammarians.
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| Slide shows on the web |
August 24 2006 |
I have seen the future of museums, and it’s on the Internet. Here are some of the best examples of what I regard as the New Museology.
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| Who put the smirk in Smerconish? |
July 14 2006 |
A Philadelphia talk radio host’s selective judgment suggests that he has found his role model in the White House.
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| Beyond 'The Da Vinci Code' |
June 03 2006 |
What’s worse than The DaVinci Code? The Christian overreaction to it. Only God knows what the earliest Christians believed as they painfully transformed their Jewish traditions into new faiths. There's enough untreated misery in the world without Opus Dei’s multiplying it in a misguided search for sainthood.
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