This book’s subtitle (“The Misunderstood Years Between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror”) aptly synopsizes its content, focusing on the 12 years of naive hope where it was seriously (we thought) suggested there would be a “peace dividend.” Considering this study
On the face of it, human rights is not exactly the most exciting topic, but in this historical survey (apparently the only comprehensive study of its kind), Micheline Ishay has reached back to the Mesopotamian code of Hammurabi and constructed a context with which to view the new, globalized world
This odd compendium of lists ends its 450 pages with Graham Fuller’s “Ten Christmas Movies to Save Us from Satan’s Power” (Fuller apologizes for leaving off Terry Zweigoff’s Bad Santa): 10. Christmas Holiday (1944, dir. Robert Siodmak) 9. Swiss Miss (1938, dir. John G. Blystone) 8. The
For some years Melville House has published the Art of the Novella series, which is now supplanted by the Contemporary Art of the Novella series, of which Nobel laureate Imre Kertész is the debut title. Tim Wilkinson, who translated the work from Hungarian, points out: [Kertész] seems strenuously to avoid
Pierre Michon’s Small Lives was first published in French in 1984, and is now being republished by Archiplelago Books, a small press out of Brooklyn that specializes in “publishing excellent translations of classic and contemporary world literature.” About Michon, David Varno explains: The task set for Michon’s readers
Tsutomu Mizukami, who died in 2004, was a prolific writer who produced all manner of books—novels, detective stories, biographies, and plays. The Temple of Wild Geese is partly autobiographical; like Mizukami was, the protagonist is raised in a Buddhist temple, which results in dire consequences years later. In Bamboo
In Churchillian terms, this was Kennedy’s finest moment. By most accounts, his handling of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a judicious and even-handed bit of brinksmanship. Of course it probably would not have been necessary had Kennedy impressed Krushchev as a strong and forceful leader in their
Tom Holm, Native American scholar at the University of Arizona, fashions his debut novel in post-Great War Oklahoma, where oil exploration and exploitation were seriously at play. Ex-cop J.D. Daugherty sets up shop as a P.I., and he and his Cherokee sidekick, Hoolie Smith, are hired
Tim Russert, in case you missed the news, has died. As he was a TV journalist, it behooves the U.S. news engine to dwell on and parse every aspect of his life and death. He was one of some magazine’s 100 most important people—which, considering how many
Many of you will no doubt recall that during the ‘60s, Oregon was a much-extolled destination for people seeking what was then (and perhaps now) considered a decent life. So much so that Oregonians wrestled with various methods of discouraging immigration—which if unchecked may have turned its idyll
