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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Watching
Conason on Paine
To commemorate the Jan. 21 birthday of Thomas Paine (Common Sense, The Rights of Man), the Center for Inquiry annually hosts the Thomas Paine Memorial Lecture. Paine has languished outside the...
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Reading
American Rust
A few American writers have captured the desolation and despair of the areas in America afflicted by ravages of post-industrial decline—Russell Banks and Richard Russo come to mind. Now...
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Reading
The Americans
Most of my adult life—what I will in my memoir (in progress) call “The Post-Graduate Years," I have, when given the opportunity, railed against the poor or lack of...
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Reading
Movies: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Cinema’s Hidden Gems
Though I hold no fondness for softcover/paperback books, I am enthralled by so-called pocket books, the dimensions of which are approximately four inches by seven inches. Perhaps I have...
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Reading
You
How does one wake up every day with a strong imperative to look for some strand of meaning from the frayed reality that relentlessly presents itself to our punch-drunk (collective...
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Listening
Carla Bley & Charlie Haden
How I became a literary omnivore remains as much a mystery to me as having the same predilections in the musical realm—I have always gravitated to music and musicians...
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Reading
The Jive Talker
These days Africa seems to be the epicenter of misery stories—if not the planet’s epicenter of misery. Which makes Malawi-born (kudos if you can point to Malawi on...
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Reading
Lawrence Weschler
[Photo by Robert Birnbaum] Inclement weather may have scuttled my chat this week with multifaceted writer Lawrence Weschler, but I want to take the opportunity to bang the drum loudly...
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Reading
Scrapbooks: An American History
These days I must admit a preoccupation with matters of history and gloomy concerns about our country’s governance. Despite being a failed scholar of history—as in, lacking the...
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Birnbaum v.
James Howard Kunstler, Redux
In a wide-ranging discussion, our man in Boston talks with novelist and skeptic James Howard Kunstler about life as it is, life as it could be, and life as we may encounter.
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Reading
Our White House: Looking In Looking Out
In this current wave of hopeful historiocity (sic) comes a fine new book for children of all ages that splendidly arrays American history. The National Children’s Book and Literary...
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Reading
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
When Barack Obama mentioned 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper in his inspiring victory speech, he utilized a device (if I can call it that) suggesting the immediacy of history through the...