Essays
1096 results
Page 102
China's "humiliation,' reconsidered
Forget the Chinese obsession with their national “humiliation.” We are just beginning to feel the power of this vast and brilliant people as they gather themselves, and us, along with the rest of the world.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. By Simon Winchester. HarperCollins, 2008. 336 pages; $27.95.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. By Simon Winchester. HarperCollins, 2008. 336 pages; $27.95.
Essays
4 minute read
Up against the Human Services bureaucracy
A grand jury recently documented the horrific life and death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly, a cerebral palsy victim who starved to death while under the “care” of Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services. It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be, as I can attest from personal experience.
Essays
7 minute read
Obama as a literary figure
In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd recently equated Barack Obama with Jane Austen’s prideful Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. A careful parsing of Dowd’s column suggests that the Democratic candidate is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
Essays
5 minute read
Lost in Lyon
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.
Essays
6 minute read
South America's 'Gringo Trail'
What compels the sons and daughters of wealthy nations (like me) to cram a few pieces of clothing into a backpack and spend months exploring Third-World South America? Mostly we travel to temporarily escape the materialism of our homelands.
Essays
9 minute read
Political satire and the New Yorker's cover
What’s the real meaning of that satirical New Yorker cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as closet Muslim terrorists? Here’s a better question: What hope is there for satire in a post-literate society?
Essays
6 minute read
Touring in Torino
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.
Essays
5 minute read
Satisfactions of home brewing
Let's face it, there's not much left that you can make at home that outshines its commercial equivalents. Homebrewed beer is the exception. And anyone who can make a good beef stew can make beer.
Essays
5 minute read
New York's baseball/money conundrum
Oh, for the sporting life in New York. When the going gets tough there, the toughest baseball executives….. find excuses.
Essays
3 minute read
The "Prague Spring,' 40 years later
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.
Essays
7 minute read