August 18, 2017
The subtitle of this passionate, well-intentioned book is key to why it makes me uneasy. One of the commonest errors a historian can make is to judge an institution or actions in the...
August 8, 2017
You've really got to respect a novelist's biographer who begins his book with a quote like this from its subject: Scott Fitzgerald once wrote...
July 25, 2017
An unfortunate side-effect of the otherwise admirable success of Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall and its subsequent blockbuster television...
July 25, 2017
If I had read this admirable study by John Pfordresher, a professor of English at Georgetown University, of the enormous amount of lived experience...
July 14, 2017
The State of Israel and its capital Jerusalem are perennially in the news...
July 6, 2017
When I heard this spring that the Library of America, that magisterial institution devoted to the most important American writers...
June 21, 2017
The notion of Americans reinventing themselves has become such a well-worn trope — even among cliches — that one is hesitant to use it...
June 19, 2017
Much as I deplore the trend within the academy towards ever more micro-courses dealing with a subsection of a subject, when it comes to books honing in on such slices of history, I...
May 25, 2017
It has long been fashionable in intellectual and academic circles to disdain soap operas, especially in their heyday in the final decades of the 20th century when groups of...
May 23, 2017
It is hard to overstate the importance of politics in the works of Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow. From his teenage years in high school, Bellow was a profoundly political person,...
May 15, 2017
If reading what Joyce Carol Oates memorably dubbed pathographies leaves you with an uneasy feeling about those who so rough up their subjects, this memoir by Patricia is a salutary...
April 11, 2017
It says a lot about the development of China in the past decades that we should have this deeply learned book by the deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at...
April 9, 2017
It is not easy for any leader of a nation to follow one whose greatness is universally acknowledged and who has a personality to match.
April 7, 2017
More than seven centuries ago the great medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri gave the classic description of the effect of loss on a human being...
March 14, 2017
Seldom if ever has there been such a neat match between author and subject as in this penetrating study of the American poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977).
February 14, 2017
British historian Helen Rappaport, who has written memorably about Russia's royal Romanovs, here turns her attention to their capital city during the year when it ceased to be theirs.
February 6, 2017
The very term Dame of the British Empire — the female equivalent of a knighthood in the British gentry — inevitably summons up a majestic figure. But there was nothing...
February 1, 2017
When it comes to fictionalized portraits of real historical figures and events, generally speaking I am skeptical of such projects. With all due respect to artistic license and the...
January 31, 2017
British military and political historian Walter Reid has written one of the most provocative original books on a well-worn subject. The bumpy road toward self-government in the...
January 26, 2017
David Owen has had one of the most protean careers of any British politician. A medical doctor by training, specializing in neurology, he went on to become a member of the British...
August 18, 2017The subtitle of this passionate, well-intentioned book is key to why it makes me uneasy. One of the commonest errors a historian can make is to judge an institution or actions in the...
August 8, 2017You've really got to respect a novelist's biographer who begins his book with a quote like this from its subject: Scott Fitzgerald once wrote...
July 25, 2017An unfortunate side-effect of the otherwise admirable success of Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall and its subsequent blockbuster television...
July 25, 2017If I had read this admirable study by John Pfordresher, a professor of English at Georgetown University, of the enormous amount of lived experience...
July 14, 2017The State of Israel and its capital Jerusalem are perennially in the news...
July 6, 2017When I heard this spring that the Library of America, that magisterial institution devoted to the most important American writers...
June 21, 2017The notion of Americans reinventing themselves has become such a well-worn trope — even among cliches — that one is hesitant to use it...
June 19, 2017Much as I deplore the trend within the academy towards ever more micro-courses dealing with a subsection of a subject, when it comes to books honing in on such slices of history, I...
May 25, 2017It has long been fashionable in intellectual and academic circles to disdain soap operas, especially in their heyday in the final decades of the 20th century when groups of...
May 23, 2017It is hard to overstate the importance of politics in the works of Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow. From his teenage years in high school, Bellow was a profoundly political person,...
May 15, 2017If reading what Joyce Carol Oates memorably dubbed pathographies leaves you with an uneasy feeling about those who so rough up their subjects, this memoir by Patricia is a salutary...
April 11, 2017It says a lot about the development of China in the past decades that we should have this deeply learned book by the deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at...
April 9, 2017It is not easy for any leader of a nation to follow one whose greatness is universally acknowledged and who has a personality to match.
April 7, 2017More than seven centuries ago the great medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri gave the classic description of the effect of loss on a human being...
March 14, 2017Seldom if ever has there been such a neat match between author and subject as in this penetrating study of the American poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977).
February 14, 2017British historian Helen Rappaport, who has written memorably about Russia's royal Romanovs, here turns her attention to their capital city during the year when it ceased to be theirs.
February 6, 2017The very term Dame of the British Empire — the female equivalent of a knighthood in the British gentry — inevitably summons up a majestic figure. But there was nothing...
February 1, 2017When it comes to fictionalized portraits of real historical figures and events, generally speaking I am skeptical of such projects. With all due respect to artistic license and the...
January 31, 2017British military and political historian Walter Reid has written one of the most provocative original books on a well-worn subject. The bumpy road toward self-government in the...
January 26, 2017David Owen has had one of the most protean careers of any British politician. A medical doctor by training, specializing in neurology, he went on to become a member of the British...
