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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Swan Peak
James Lee Burke is a fine crime-story writer, and this is another one of his Dave Robicheaux novels. Most of them were set in New Orleans—which was an important...
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Cost
Roxana Robinson (Sweetwater) belongs to a small but important subspecies of humanity who can translate their imaginations into vivid and compelling prose. In raw numbers their population on our planet...
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The Journey Home
Having been published to accolades on distant shores, it took a while for Dermot Bolger’s harrowing and gritty depiction of late-century Dublin to make it to America (kudos to...
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The Turnaround
Receiving a new George Pelecanos novel wreaks havoc on my well-ordered universe. I immediately set aside all but my most urgent responsibilities and appointments until I have turned the last...
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Rising, Falling, Hovering
As many commentators suggest, the idiosyncratic C.D. Wright is a school or movement of one, connecting the personal with the political (the war in Iraq, the post-Katrina debacle in...
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Moyers on Democracy
One of the puzzling aspects of the roiling cultural waters of late-capitalist America is that Bill Moyers, a mild, thoughtful, and well-spoken Christian, should serve as the feared left-wing demon...
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One Man’s America
As a talking head, George F. Will does present himself as an arid and smug and, dare I say, tight-sphinctered Caucasian. His writing, though (except for his humorless desiccations of...
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The Chattering Classes
It’s really noisy out there. “Conservative bloggers jab Obama on foreign languages.” (Huh?) Christie is getting divorced. There is a new cell phone. Angelina had twins. Microsoft cut the...
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W.A.R.: The Unauthorized Biography of William Axl Rose
Not being a fan of Guns N’ Roses, or whatever motherlode of music they mined, I nonetheless accept that the lead figures of commercially successful bands can’t help but...
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Worried Sick
Two things seem indisputable: American healthcare costs are irrationally inflated and Americans are not commensurately healthy. Nortin M. Hadler, M.D (The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite...
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Mixing It Up
Man of letters and contrarian Ishmael Reed has a substantial body of literary work; this book anthologizes various of Reed’s op-eds for The New York Times and Playboy. Reed...
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The Radical Jack London
Jack London, best known for his beloved dog tales, The Call of the Wild and White Fang, was a deeply committed progressive voice, and this anthology makes a good argument...