June 19, 2009

Interivew with Dana Kaplan, Author of Contemporary American Judaism

In the following interview Dana Kaplan discusses his new book Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal. In the book, Kaplan focuses on the creative responses to contemporary spiritual trends that have made a Jewish religious renaissance possible. He argues that...

June 18, 2009

Stephen Phillips Discusses His New Book "Yoga, Karma, Rebirth"

In the following video, Stephen Phillips discusses his new book Yoga, Karma, Rebirth: A Brief History and Philosophy. For more on the book, you can also read an interview with Stephen Phillips or read an excerpt from the book.

June 17, 2009

Gastropolis Goes to Governor's Island

On Sunday, June 21st at 1:00, the editors of and some of the contributors to Gastropolis: Food and New York City head out to Governor’s Island to read from and discuss their personal and historical perspectives on food and New...

June 16, 2009

Celebrate Bloomsday with Marilyn Monroe

The image of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses is from the cover to James Joyce: A Critical Guide, by Lee Spinks and since it is Bloomsday today, we thought we would point out a few Joyce-related titles from our list. In...

June 15, 2009

Is Ted Striphas a Distribution Nerd?

The headline to this post refers to a suggestion made by Steven Poole in his Guardian review of Ted Striphas’s new book, The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control. Poole remarks on Striphas’s nerd-like fascination...

June 12, 2009

Interview with Hans-Georg Moeller, Author of The Moral Fool

June 11, 2009

Jameel Jaffer Discusses the Suppression of CIA Documents on "Hardball"

Jameel Jaffer, co-author of Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, recently appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews to discuss the suppression of CIA documents relating to the interrogation of prisoners at Guantánamo and...

June 10, 2009

Marda Dunsky on Satellite Television in the Arab World

In a recent article for the Wide Angle Web site, Marda Dunsky, author of Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, looks at the phenomenon of satellite television in the Arab world. Dunsky argues that...

June 9, 2009

Candidate and Blogger Gianni Vattimo

Gianni Vattimo, noted European intellectual and author of the recently published Not Being God: A Collaborative Autobiography, was a victorious candidate in last weekend’s European Parliamentary elections. Moreover, his party, the leftist Italy of Values Party, was considered a winner...

June 8, 2009

"In North Korea, everyone knows that a labor camp is a place where life is suspended. One does not live there, one slowly dies there. I was simply another dead soul in Camp No. 14."

As the New York Times and others have reported, North Korea sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor. While little is known about them, the North Korean labor camps are notorious for their brutal conditions. One of...

June 5, 2009

Marc Lynch on Obama's Speech

President Obama’s speech today in Cairo met the bar he set for himself. In an address modeled after the Philadelphia speech on race, he forewent soaring oratory in favor of a thoughtful, nuanced and challenging reflection on America’s relations with...

June 5, 2009

Anecdotal Evidence Weighs in on Our Savage Art

Patrick Kurp’s Anecdotal Evidence, an excellent lit-blog, recently devoted a post to William Logan’s new collection Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue. As might be expected from any reader of Logan, Kurp does have some misgivings about Logan’s...