I ventured into the wilds of lower Hastings (or perhaps it was uper Yonkers) to attend the latest version of Spoken Interludes, the series of readings organized and hosted by my friend, the novelist DeLaune Michel. Last night’s readers were Jennifer Coady Epstein, author of the novel The Painter from Shanghai (almost all the guests …
Apparently Newt Gingrich is going to announce today that he is forming a presidential exploratory committee (or its equivalent). Many people on the left scoff at the notion of Gingrich being able to mount a serious campaign, pointing to his embarrassed departure from the speakership in 1998, his messy private life, and the sickbed divorces. …
My new favorite commercial is this Volvo ad, featuring the unique song stylings of the Swedish singer Miss Li. Lots of pizzazz.
It has always shocked me that it took nearly four years after the Crash of 1929 for the famous Pecora hearings to take place. One cannot believe that all that time passed before the Senate held hearings that exposed the corrupt and short-sighted practices that ruined the economy. Well, here we are, coming up on …
In his explanation of why he refused to release the photos of the dead body of Osama bin Laden, President Obama told 60 Minutes “”We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies. We don’t need to spike the football.” I don’t agree. Put me down as standing with the Beatles on this one. As they …
Ezra Klein has a smart, sobering piece in The Washington Post today, evaluating the strategy of Osama bin Laden, and how he has almost succeeded in attaining his goals. Klein speaks to a counterterrorism and al-Qaeda expert named Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, whose view is that “bin Laden has been enormously successful” using a strategy that the …
Forty years ago, at the tender age of 17, I found in the book rack at Reade’s drug store on Belair Road in Baltimore–improbably enough–a copy of Managing Mailer, an account of Norman Mailer 1969 campaign to become mayor of New York, written by his manager Joe Flaherty. As I have previously written, this book …
Terrific article, amazing photos in the New York Times about President Obama‘s vantage on the killing of Osama bin Laden: “On Sunday afternoon, as the helicopters raced over Pakistani territory, the president and his advisers gathered in the Situation Room of the White House to monitor the operation as it unfolded. Much of the time …
The political analyst Jeff Greenfield, who very generously gave a cover blurb to The Coup a few years ago, has written an insightful new book called Then Everything Changed, a very entertaining account of a bizarro political journey through three recent decades–sixties, seventies and eighties–in which a very plausible turn of one event sends the …
Is this the end of The Global War on Terror? asks Jim Fallows on theatlantic.com. “For years anti-terrorism experts have stressed the decentralized, self-sustaining nature of al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations around the world. The elimination of the celebrated symbol and inspiration of the movement will certainly not mean the end of terrorist threats, …