Category: Subject

December 3, 2010

My Life with the Taliban author on Wikileaks

One of the documents released by Wikileaks (reprinted in The Guardian) includes a US embassy cable regarding the views of Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef a former Taliban minister and author of My Life with the Taliban. Zaeef, who has tried...

December 2, 2010

David Foster Wallace: Brief Interviews with Philosophy Students, Part I

In conjunction with the publication of David Foster Wallace’s undergraduate thesis, Maureen Eckert, coeditor of Fate, Time, and Language, interviewed two contemporary philosophy students whose first exposure to the work of David Foster Wallace came through his philosophical work. These...

December 1, 2010

Daniel Rigney: The Matthew Effect as Social Spiral

The following is a post by Daniel Rigney, author of The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage. The “Matthew effect” is a term coined by the Columbia University sociologist Robert Merton in 1968 to describe a common pattern in...

November 30, 2010

David Foster Wallace as Philosopher

“I was just awfully good at technical philosophy, and it was the first thing I’d ever been really good at, and so everybody, including me, anticipated I’d make it a career. But it sort of emptied out for me somewhere...

November 29, 2010

The Novelist's Lexicon Inspires Other Authors

Taking their cue from The Novelist’s Lexicon: Writers on the Words That Define Their Work, The National Post asked Yann Martel and a cross-section of Canadian writers to choose a word that “opens a door to their work.” Words selected...

November 29, 2010

Caryl Rivers, Rosalind Chait Barnett: Single-Sex Ed Based on Baloney Science

In a recent op-ed Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett, authors of the forthcoming The Truth About Girls and Boys: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children, applaud the recent decision by Boston school superintendent Carol Johnson to back away from...

November 24, 2010

Andrew Smith Exposes the Truth About Thanksgiving

In the chapter “Giving Thanks” from his book Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, Andrew Smith reveals that “the whole idea that the Pilgrims were the first to celebrate Thanksgiving in America was, in fact...

November 22, 2010

Qian Zhongshu — The Best Chinese Writer You’ve Never Heard of

In an essay for The China Beat, Christopher Rea, assistant professor of modern Chinese literature at the University of British Columbia, calls Qian Zhongshu, “the best Chinese writers you’ve never heard of.” So who was Qian? Qian is perhaps best...

November 19, 2010

The Novelist's Lexicon: "fascinating and strangely disciplined"

The Los Angeles Times book blog Jacket Copy called The Novelist’s Lexicon: Writers on the Words That Define Their Work “a fascinating and strangely disciplined set of responses” to the question posed to writers to find one word that creates...

November 18, 2010

A Brilliant Rivalry: Victor Cha and David Kang

Amid the sometimes competitive world of academia and the frequently divisive world of contemporary politics, it would be unlikely to find a collaborative relationship among two people from different sides of the political spectrum. However, the influential scholars David Kang...

November 17, 2010

Gary Francione on the Abolitionist Approach

On his blog Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach, Gary Francione, most recently the author of The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation, writes a series of commentaries/podcasts. In the most recent installment, “The Animal Rights Debate,” the Abolitionist Approach Discussion...

November 16, 2010

Jonathan Soffer interviewed about Ed Koch by the New York Press

In a just-published interview with the New York Press, Jonathan Soffer, author of Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City, weighs in on a variety of Koch-related topics, ranging from his distinctive and often abrasive personality and his...