Books and Arts
Blood and Soil
Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 By Joyce Chaplin (Harvard University Press, 411 pp. $45) READ MORE >>
Female Difficulties
Fanny Burney: A Biography By Claire Harman (Alfred A. Knopf, 417 pp., $30) READ MORE >>
The Historian as Hero
The Light of the Eyes By Azariah de’Rossi Translated and annotated by Joanna Weinberg (Yale University Press, 802 pp., $125) READ MORE >>
The Right Thing
I. Schools, Vouchers and the American Public by Terry M. Moe (Brookings Institution Press, 452 pp., $29.95) READ MORE >>
Deathwork
Wake when dog whimpers. Prick Finger. Shoot up insulin. Glue teeth in. Smoke a cigarette. Shudder and fret. Feed dog and cat. Write syllabic On self-pity. Get Boston Globe. Drink coffee. Eat bagel. Read At nervous speed. Smoke a cigarette. Never forget To measure oneself against Job. Drag out afternoon. Walk dog. Don't write. Turn off light. Smoke a cigarette Watching sun set. Wait for the fucking moon. Nuke lasagna. Pace and curse. READ MORE >>
The Stifled Society
The Lost Art of Drawing the Line: How Fairness Went Too FarBy Phillip K. Howard READ MORE >>
Late Afternoon, Rome
Down the street, on the path to the oratory, the stations of the cross—huge bronze slabs, their ordinary agonies modernized to poses on a fashion runway—have been wired shut. A river of swallows sheers off course again Around airlocked spurs of warmth or chill. The sun is out late, panning for gold in the silt of our ochre upper floors. Everything is looking up for a change. Isn't that white capsule on the blue tablecloth the daily jumbo jet? It's so far beyond the cross and thorns, beyond the drawstring READ MORE >>
America Made Easy
John Adams By David McCullough (Simon & Schuster, 751 pp., $35) I. READ MORE >>
Job's Doctors
Saving Milly: Love, Politics, and Parkinson’s Disease by Morton Kondracke By Morton Kondracke (PublicAffairs, 275 pp., $25) READ MORE >>
Scandal and Scholarship
I. READ MORE >>