Essays
1096 results
Page 74
Capital punishment as an oxymoron
A tale of two executions
Troy Davis was probably wrongly convicted of murder. Lawrence Brewer was almost surely guilty of an egregious racial killing. But both executions demonstrated why capital punishment is wrong in itself.
Essays
6 minute read
September Surf Song
Body and spirit together, for a few weeks more
Hemingway fought his big fish; I still fight the surf. Especially when the sea lets me forget that my body's growing older.
Essays
4 minute read
The 9/11 Anniversary: Enough already
Ten years after: What price vengeance?
I was as angry at 9/11 as anyone else, and as gung-ho about going after Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. That moment passed when I saw that what we were doing to ourselves and others far exceeded the harm that had been done to us, and with far more lasting consequences.
Essays
3 minute read
How to respond to tyrants?
A tale of three tyrants (and one confused U.S. president)
America's deeply inconsistent response to uprisings against three Middle East tyrants— Mubarak in Egypt, Qaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria— suggests the confusion, inconsistency and (in Libya's case) the cynicism of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Essays
6 minute read
The Zen of getting canned
Losing a job isn't cancer (but then, what is?)
Surely surviving cancer, three different times, would throw everything else in life into perspective, I thought. Then I got fired.
Essays
4 minute read
Poet Philip Levine's working-class credentials
Limousine proletarian
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?
Essays
3 minute read
Those Civil War re-enactments
War is swell (especially if it's air conditioned)
When Santayana said that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, he must have had today's Civil War re-enactors in mind. These weekend warriors repeat actions that no one has any way of remembering or repeating. How authentic can you be if you don't have to dodge real bullets and cannon fire?
Essays
4 minute read
Eight questions about the Civil War
What Castro learned from Fort Sumter, and other lingering questions about the Civil War
As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, some questions are seldom if ever asked. For example: Was the bloodiest war in U.S. history really necessary?
Essays
3 minute read
Obama's unproclaimed war
Watching the war on my vacation, or: A sudden illumination about Obama
As I kicked back on a sunny Aegean island, I was startled by the roar of NATO fighter jets returning from Libya. I could see that getting away from Obama this summer was going to be more difficult than I thought. Our president has been a puzzle to many: so prompt to confront a foreign dictator, so easily intimidated by any Republican.
Essays
5 minute read
Heart attack, Part 2: Anatomy of a procedure
‘It looked like a bomb exploded': A patient's-eye view of a heart procedure
Inserting the stent wouldn't take more than an hour, I was told. Two hours later, sedated but still awake, I gleaned troubled conversations among the doctor, the nurse and the technicians. If these professionals were worried, what was an amateur like me supposed to think?
