September 30, 2010

Interview with Robert Hanning, author of "Serious Play"

Robert W. Hanning was interviewed, on the publication of his book, Serious Play. Desire and Authority in the Poetry of Ovid, Chaucer, and Ariosto, by Pocahontas Perelstein, feminist critic and talk show host. A partial transcript follows: Q: How did...

September 29, 2010

Interview with Seth Stein, author of "Disaster Deferred"

The following is an interview with Seth Stein, author of Disaster Deferred: How New Science is Changing Our View of Earthquake Hazards in the Midwest. Q: What’s wrong with the stories we hear about the 1811 and 1812 New Madrid...

September 28, 2010

John Calvert on Sayyid Qutb

On Rorotoko, John Calvert. author of Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, offers a fascinating discussion of the subject of his book and his ambitions in writing the book. While recognizing the faults of Qutb’s fundamentalist thought, he...

September 27, 2010

Jerelle Kraus on the New York Times Op-Ed at 40

Yesterday’s New York Times celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the op-ed section. Part of the commemoration is a video dedicated to the influential illustrations of the op-ed section. The video includes an interview with Jerelle Kraus, the former art director...

September 24, 2010

Dosse on Deleuze and Guattari

Francois Dosse, author of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Intersecting Lives, has been touring the country discussing the book. To packed houses at NYU, Columbia, and Harvard, Dosse has been discussing the somewhat unlikely partnership that had a profound effect...

September 23, 2010

How Unusual Is China’s Currency Policy? — A post by Steven Bryan

The following post is from Steven Bryan author of The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Rising Powers, Global Money, and the Age of Empire. There is no great mystery to the appeal of depreciating currencies for...

September 22, 2010

James Fleming takes the page 99 test and is featured in the American Scholar

James Fleming author of Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate, explains what page 99 of his book does and does not reveal about his work: Page 99 of Fixing the Sky tells two stories of rain...

September 21, 2010

"Fried chicken and French fries to snack. Soccer after school. Hip hop music. Nike threads. Family obligations. Difference has rarely been so strikingly familiar"

Justin Gest begins his book Apart: Alienated and Engaged Muslims in the West with a description of the young man portrayed on the cover of the book (see above). Zak lives on London’s East End in an unfinished project. Like...

September 20, 2010

Jonathan Soffer on the Legacy of Ed Koch

Sam Roberts begins his New York Times review of Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City by citing a decade-old survey of scholars, which ranked Koch as the 15th worst mayor in American history. Not too good. But...

September 16, 2010

Bloggers from around the World Review Pomodoro!

The Crispy Cook organized other bloggers from around the world to review David Gentilcore’s book Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy. Bloggers from Athens, Crete, England, Canada, Hawaii, and upstate New York not only weighed in on the...

September 15, 2010

Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City

Benjamin Schwarz’s “Editor’s Choice” in The Atlantic includes a discussion of Jonathan Soffer’s Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City. (The article unexpectedly begins with the “sequel” to The Preppy Handbook and ends with Soffer’s book. Schwarz praises...

September 14, 2010

The Changing Face of the Taliban

In a recent issue of the London Review of Books , Jonathan Steele examines the current situation in Afghanistan and reviews two recent CUP books, My Life with the Taliban, the autobiography of former Taliban leader Abdul Salam Zaeef, and...