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April 29, 2009

Herve This and Pierre Gagnaire on Synthetic Foods

A recent article in the Times of London discusses how Herve This, author of the recently published Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism, and legendary chef Pierre Gagnaire have created the first entirely synthetic gourmet dish. Created...

April 28, 2009

Mere Fondness for the Beautiful — A Post by Stephen Burt

Stephen Burt teaches in the English Department at Harvard University. He is most recently the author of Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry and The Forms of Youth: Twentieth-Century Poetry and Adolescence. He has also written three books of...

April 28, 2009

More from William Logan — An Excerpt from Our Savage Art

As Poetry Month winds to a close and with Sunday’s NYT review still fresh in our minds, we thought it appropriate to return once again to William Logan’s Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue. In the opening essay...

April 27, 2009

The New York Times Reviews William Logan's Our Savage Art

Given William Logan’s sharp criticisms of contemporary poets (see examples here and here), one could only wonder how he might fare under the scrutiny of another critic. So, how would the New York Times Book Review assess William Logan’s new...

April 24, 2009

Antoine Bousquet's The Scientific Way of Warfare Takes the Page 99 Test

The Page 99 Test is an intriguing Web site that takes up Ford Maddox Ford’s suggestion that if you “”Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” Antoine Bousquet...

April 24, 2009

Laura Mitchell on the South African Elections

Laura J. Mitchell, author of Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa, An Exploration of Frontiers, 1725- c. 1830, recently contributed an article to Huffington Post about the upcoming elections in South Africa. Despite its many problems South...

April 23, 2009

Can Evolution Explain the Female Orgasm?

We recently posted an excerpt on evolutionary explanations of the female orgasm from David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton’s How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories. The post received some, well let’s say hard-earned praise from Jessa...

April 22, 2009

Earth Day Selection: Climate Change by Edmond Mathez

Leave it to George Will to not let us forget why Earth Day is still necessary. As the conservative columnist continues to dig himself a deeper hole by attacking global warming science, we are reminded why it so important that...

April 21, 2009

Michael Ruhlman on Herve This

Well-known food author and cooking expert Michael Ruhlman was recently in New York City and wrote about and quoted from Hervé This’sBuilding a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism. The post begins with a recipe for Vanilla sauce in...

April 21, 2009

Leonard Cassuto, English Professor, on John Madden, Football Announcer

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Leonard Cassuto, the author of Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories, argues that recently retired football announcer John Madden “made us smarter.” Admittedly, Cassuto’s book has nothing to do with football but...

April 21, 2009

"Obama Was Right to Release Torture Memos." — Jameel Jaffer

Yesterday, we featured Jameel Jaffer’s interview with Glenn Greenwald on Salon and today we point your attention to Jaffer’s post on the Free Speech Blog. Jameel Jaffer, who is the co-editor with Amrit Singh of Administration of Torture: A Documentary...

April 20, 2009

Jameel Jaffer Interview with Glenn Greenwald and Salon

“Simply political documents that were meant to provide window dressing for war crimes.”—Jameel Jaffer on the recently released CIA memos. Jameel Jaffer, co-editor with Amrit Singh of Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond,...