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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Reading
Parrworld
Controversial British photographer and Magnum member Martin Parr, who was once derided by Magnum founder and photographic titan Henri Cartier-Bresson as “from another planet,” is also known as a collector...
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Reading
Recently Read
I don’t know about others (though the common default explanation is some variation of attention deficit) but my reading habits have seemingly transformed into something unrecognizable to the Me...
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Reading
Across the Agua to Managua, Nicaragua
Though never far from my thoughts, the Central American nation of Nicaragua, to which I traveled in 1989, does manage occasionally to penetrate the American cultural noise machine--most recently with a...
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Watching
The Making of the Presidents
As an almost lifelong observer of presidential politics--which I have come to view as the American quadrennial carnival of democracy--I sadly assert that the once energizing and redemptive spectacle of...
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Reading
Handmade Nation
In our heavily industrialized civilization, we have rightly placed a great value on handmade, original one- or few-of-a-kind goods. For Handmade Nation: The Rise of D.I.Y., Art, Craft,...
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Reading
The Given Day
Though I am not an admirer or enthusiast of Boston writer Dennis Lehane, who is best known for the novel on which Clint Eastwood based his film Mystic River--I have...
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Birnbaum v.
Amy Bloom
Straight from Boston, a conversation with author Amy Bloom on her latest book, Away, the benefits of the writing life, and the tedium of extra-long novels.
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Reading
Lost on Planet China
Which superpower regularly exports inferior goods, infiltrates other economies, has a questionable human rights record, and preemptively wars against other sovereign nations? Strong evidence can be presented that the U...
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Reading
Obscene in the Extreme
In some fashion you all, no doubt, celebrated Banned Books Week (Sept. 29-Oct. 6), the American Library Association’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. How, you are asking, might...
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Reading
The Watchdogs
Apparently we are heading to an important election and many citizens and various aliens of all stripes, eyes, and ears are being besieged by the various soothsayers, talking heads, and...
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Reading
George Grosz: Berlin-New York
Perhaps it is too obvious that the manifold pleasures of the world (as well all manner of infelicities, not to mention horrors) mostly come at you without introduction or warning....
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Reading
Burning Down the House
It is not beyond reason to assert that the small segment of humanity devoted to the written word can be further divided into those who find reading as an escape...