December 8, 2009

On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor — A post by Greg Robinson

The following post is by Greg Robinson, author of A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America. December 7 remains, as Franklin Roosevelt predicted, a date that lives in infamy. It merits this title, though, not just as the...

December 7, 2009

James Igoe Walsh takes the page 99 test

Taking Ford Maddox Ford’s suggestion to heart (“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you”), The Page 99 Test asks authors to focus in on this particular page. Recently...

December 4, 2009

Best films of the decade

Since it is 2009 we are seeing both best-of-the-year and best-of-the-decade lists. While many of these lists seemingly serve to reinforce critical consensus, the same cannot be said of the Toronto International Film Festival’s list of the best movies from...

December 3, 2009

Kelly Oliver takes The Page 99 Test

Taking Ford Maddox Ford’s suggestion to heart (“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you”), The Page 99 Test asks authors to focus in on this particular page. Recently,...

December 2, 2009

Views on Afghanistan and the Taliban

Last night, President Obama articulated his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, which is now in its eighth year. Needless to say, the complicated nature of Afghan politics, which is characterized by both change and chaos as well as...

December 1, 2009

Bertolucci called us a kind of wild cinema university — Toby Talbot in Rorotoko

* There will be a discussion and reception with Toby Talbot for her new book on Thursday, December 3rd at 7:00 pm at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas at 1886 Broadway (at 62nd Street) Peter Bogdanovich says the New Yorker Theater is...

November 30, 2009

Animal, Vegetable, Miserable — An op-ed by Gary Steiner

Now that the Thanksgiving meal has been eaten and people have moved on to Black Friday or Cyber Monday, we thought it appropriate to mention Gary Steiner’s much-discussed New York Times op-ed from last week, Animal, Vegetable, Miserable. In the...

November 25, 2009

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 24, 2009

Interview with Elliot R. Wolfson on his new book "Open Secret"

November 23, 2009

David Allen Sibley: How to draw an osprey

Earlier this month Amazon’s blog Omnivoracious wrote a post about a recent visit by David Allen Sibley to their offices. Since we recently published Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds, which is edited by Billy Collins and...

November 20, 2009

The Hitler in all of us: The New Statesman reviews Utopia or Auschwitz

Members of Germany’s radical 1968 generation, who criticized the remnants of fascism and Nazism in West German politics and society, would in later years become members of the political elite. Figures like former chancellor Gerhard Schroder or his foreign minister...

November 19, 2009

2009's best books about books

Book Patrol, the Seattle PI book blog, recently put together a list of the best books on books from 2009. Included on the list is Ted Striphas’s The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control. Here’s...