The New Republic

The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Bad Parenting By Alice Miller Translated by Andrew Jenkins (W.W. Norton, 207 pp., $23.95) A decade or so ago, in The Culture of Complaint, Robert Hughes cited various cultural phenomena as symptoms of a rampant idiocy in American public life. He reserved particular scorn for the popular movement known as "recovery": READ MORE >>

Ticket lines for movies are rare in Israel, and rarer still for features that have already been showing for five weeks, and unprecedented for a German production centered on the character of Adolf Hitler. Yet Israelis are still lining up to see Oliver Hirschbiegel's tenebrous docudrama about the Third Reich's closing days, Der Untergang--The Downfall. READ MORE >>

Law Without Nations?: Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States By Jeremy A. Rabkin (Princeton University Press, 350 pp., $29.95)  READ MORE >>

In Hollywood, the one thing as inevitable as death and taxes is sequels. They roll them out, year after year, the 2s and IIs, the Returns and Revenges, and Strikes Backs and Strikes Agains. For decades, the first rule of making a successful sequel has been simple and unchanging: Figure out what you did right the first time and do it again. READ MORE >>

Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger By Laurence Leamer (St. Martin's Press, 432 pp., $24.95) Click here to buy this book Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics and Celebrity in the Age of Contempt By Gary Indiana (New Press, 140 pp., $19.95) Click here to buy this book READ MORE >>

"Am I on?" asks the figure on camera, who identifies herself as "Laura Lou." "This is like a testimony, isn't it?" She wipes her face nervously, explaining, "Jimmy says when I wear too much makeup it makes me look like a whore." Her story is about the beatings she used to take from her drunken husband; she tells it between sobs, tugging at her bangs as if to hide behind them. At one point she breaks down altogether. "I can't talk," she weeps. "This is really hard for me." But she assembles herself again and goes back to her sad tale. "One night," she says, "he got out the gun. READ MORE >>

I was yearning to see the flowers that I love most this time of year--peonies--and it was a particularly lovely spring day, so my husband and I took the subway to Brooklyn to visit the botanical gardens there. Perhaps because it had been a rather cool spring, it turned out that we had arrived too early; the feathery blooms of the peonies were still tightly bound up in perfectly rounded, silky orbs. READ MORE >>

On several occasions throughout the course of his Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator, Martin Scorcese throws in a contemporaneous snippet of newsreel footage or an archival radio broadcast. "Young Texas industrialist Howard Hughes just won't stop pouring money into his war epic. And do we mean epic!" one announcer gushes during the production of Hughes's film Hell's Angels. READ MORE >>

Sneaking Into the Flying Circus: How the Media Turn Our Presidential Campaigns Into Freak Shows By Alexandra Pelosi (Free Press, 320 pp., $33.25) Click here to buy this book READ MORE >>

Spring is here, and with it comes the high school class of 2005. Ah, graduation: caps and gowns, "Pomp and Circumstance," diplomas, class picnics, barbecues, pranks, and, of course, interminable speeches and non-denominational benedictions. Just in case your high school isn't providing enough cliches about the next big step — striving toward goals, being yourself, standing up for what you believe in, becoming a well-rounded adult — Maria Shriver has stepped in with a graduation speech-cum-minibook-cum-gagfest. READ MORE >>