Books
395 results
Page 34
Evan Mandery’s 'A Wild Justice'
The Nine Lives of Capital Punishment
Opponents are more optimistic than they have been in almost 50 years that the death penalty is a dying institution. But such hopes have been dashed before, as Evan J. Mandery’s Wild Justice points out.
Articles
5 minute read
Eric Schlosser’s ‘Command and Control’
Nuclear roulette: Nothing can go wrong, go wrong….
Relax: We made it through the Cold War without a nuclear attack. Don’t relax: The U.S. still holds 4,500 nukes, all vulnerable to the mishaps and malfunctions that plague every complex human endeavor.
Articles
4 minute read
‘On Looking,’ by Alexandra Horowitz
A walker in the city (who really opens her eyes)
Walking is an utterly mundane way to experience our environment. It’s also one of the conceptually richest— especially if, like the cognitive psychologist Alexandra Horowitz, you choose perceptive companions.
Articles
5 minute read
Lynne Olson’s ‘Those Angry Days’
America’s forgotten civil war
The struggle over America’s entry into World War II remains a subject of perennial interest. Lynne Olson’s new book weaves the complex strands of the story while bringing its protagonists— especially the impenetrable Charles Lindbergh— vividly to life.
Articles
7 minute read
Albert Camus at 100
The rebel, the moralist, and the man
Albert Camus, once read on every college campus in America, is now remembered vaguely if at all. Yet his voice is timelessly relevant, and so is his compelling cry for decency and morality in an unforgiving universe.
Articles
5 minute read
Henry Bushkin's 'Johnny Carson'
His master’s voice
Like so many celebrities, Johnny Carson, the beloved king of late-night TV, was a public success and a personal failure. What does that tell us about his enabler, who is currently spilling the beans about his former client?
Articles
5 minute read
Margaret MacMillan’s ‘Dangerous Games'
What historians (and politicians) don't know
The past shapes the present in ways we ignore at our peril. It’s even more dangerous to misread it, though, as Margaret MacMillan points out in her new book. But many would-be historians are tempted by folly and ambition to try.
Articles
5 minute read
Austenmania: Moral fables for modern times
Beneath the cleavage: Jane Austen’s closet feminists
Why are 21st-century Americans attracted to narratives featuring heroines whose economic survival depends upon snaring a wealthy husband? Perhaps because they refuse to be passive victims.
Articles
3 minute read
Robert Weintraub’s ‘The Victory Season’
Baseball, then and now
Robert Weintraub’s The Victory Season looks back to America’s first postwar baseball year, 1946, when the Red Sox and Cardinals faced each other, as this year, in an entertaining World Series. The differences in the game—and in ourselves—are palpable, though.
Articles
7 minute read
Julian Rushton’s ‘Mozart’
The astonishing truth about Mozart
Mozart was a genius, but he was hardly the womanizer and spendthrift of popular mythology. His immense musical talent aside, Mozart was a pretty ordinary guy.
Articles
4 minute read