I know novelist Cathleen Schine (The New Yorkers) to be a talented and amusing writer, but somehow I have never been attracted to her stories. Her new novel, The Three Weissmanns of Westport (FSG), is reportedly an homage to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility—which makes me wonder what
Economists say it's premature to call the recession over--unemployment numbers are still too high. Geithner: Learning from the last financial crisis--and installing more accountability--will prevent the next meltdown. Investigators say WaMu created a "mortgage time bomb" by selling loans to investors without disclosing
Joe Franklin is a New York institution, having interviewed untold celebrities and been (jokingly) accused of rape by Sarah Silverman.
Fire at revered Ugandan tombs increases tension between president and ethnic minority. Genetic disorder found that eradicates racial, but not gender, bias. Rituals of the Protocol Office, currently managing whims of 46 international delegations in D.C. Rwanda's missing U.N. ambassador turns up in Alabama, and he
Pearl London was a beloved teacher and writer at the New School. In 1970, she started to invite guests to her seminar that over 25 years became called “Works in Progress.” Guests included Maxine Kumin, Robert Hass, June Jordan, Galway Kinnell, Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Simic, Ann Carson, Paul Muldoon, Robert
Op: The measly fine against Toyota is a good reminder of why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration needs more ammo. A three-year timeline of the inquiries, accidents, and misdirections that soured Toyota's reputation. "There's stuff on the Internet about me. I've
French photographer Denis Darzacq reminds us of the freedom that escaping materialism brings, even when we are left to wonder: Are these figures floating or falling?
While others talk nukes, Obama and Jintao will discuss currency--though probably not currency manipulation. Lucid summary of events in Kyrgyzstan. Op: Reliance on authoritarian regimes is both miserable ethics and poor strategy. Dawkins and Hitchens seek to arrest the Pope in September. Hitchens: Ratzinger will be remembered for only
Texas is the punch line to a lot of gallows humor about the American criminal justice system, and my recent note on attorney David Dow’s book, The Autobiography of an Execution, points out the reality. Here’s some data to add to the grim picture: * Rank of Texas’s
For lack of a better metaphor, suffice it to say that visits from my UPS driver and his delivery brethren make almost every day like Christmas at my address. But the recent arrival of Fantagraphics’s Gahan Wilson’sFifty Years of Playboy Cartoons (three volumes, slip-cased, 942 pages), containing
