Articles Written By Robert Birnbaum
Robert Birnbaum is editor-at-large at Identity Theory. All the sketchy details of his life will be (re)fabricated in his memoir-in-progress, Just Talking: How to Do Things With Words. His weblog can be found here.
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New Finds
Whom Do You Trust?
Nick Tosches’s restless curiosity trods a wide literary terrain, and his formidable talents cross boundaries and barriers that might restrain lesser minds. He has written extraordinary (and perhaps definitive)...
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Current Reads
The Mysteries of Mississippi
Mississipian Steve Yarbrough’s Prisoners of War is a novel to which I regularly make reference as one that is vastly underappreciated—though now having read four of his novels,...
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Rare Medium
The People’s Historian
As you probably have read at this site and many other venues, my valued mentor and dear friend Howard Zinn has passed away. It is some small evidence of his...
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Coffee Table Gallery
Who Shot Rock?
Photography historian and curator Gail Buckland, whose The Magic Image (with Cecil Beaton) is a seminal history of photography and one of her dozen highly regarded books on photography, adds...
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Serious Fun
Before the Fall
Chicago-born writer John McNally (America’s Report Card, The Book of Ralph, The Ghosts of Chicago), who teaches at Wake Forest University and thankfully has not gone native by embellishing...
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Rare Medium
A Thoughtful View
Last week I had a pleasant and stimulating conversation with Nick Flynn whose new book made mention of and was influenced by Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting...
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Back in the Day
The Dustbin of History
That portion of the human community that self-assigns itself the task of reminding all of us the lowly values of the human species and regularly intones and scolds “I told...
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The New Pantheon
Best European Fiction
Dismissing the misplaced use of the superlative in the title, this first anthology of European fiction (which proposes to be annual) depends for its credibility on its editor, Sarajevo-born Aleksandar...
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Current Reads
The Good Shepard
In baseball lingo, Sam Shepard is at least a four-tool talent—writer, playwright, screenwriter (Paris, Texas), and actor. As an actor Shepard has made valuable contributions to some memorable films ...
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New Finds
Big Troubles
In military and diplomatic circles small wars are operations undertaken under executive authority within certain parameters. In the case of my insights and perambulations for this day, Small Wars (Harper...
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Serious Fun
Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out Redux
Don Lattin (Jesus Freaks), who for years covered religion for San Francisco newspapers, has a new book: The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew...
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Mi, Mi, Mi, Mi
Ask Not for Whom the Bomb Ticks
Writer, poet, and University of Houston mentor Nick Flynn received well-deserved attention and commendations for the first installment of his memoirs, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City, which chronicled a...