The New Republic

Devotee though I am of Mad Men, I haven't had a chance to catch up with the first two episodes of its new season, so I'm hearing second-hand that Henry Francis, the aide to New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller who earlier rescued Betty from her marriage to Don (and now kind of regrets it because Betty's such a head case) last night--which is to say, in 1966, when this new season is set--called Michigan Gov. George Romney "a clown." Francis is shown saying into a telephone, "Well, tell Jim his honor's not going to Michigan. READ MORE >>

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This is the new column in TNR’s weekly series of "Mad Men" episode recaps. Caution: It contains spoilers. Click here for last week's review. READ MORE >>

The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment By Geoffrey Kabaservice (Henry Holt, 573 pp., $30)   READ MORE >>

Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD By Lou Cannon (Times Books, 698 pp., $35) Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Struggle for Integration By Tamar Jacoby (Free Press, 624 pp., $30) READ MORE >>

 Note: in the late spring of 1960, the Spanish Poet J. E. Cirlot sent an open letter to the editor of the Paris Review. “The error of symbolist artists and writers,” he wrote “has always een precisely this: that they sought to turn the entire sphere of reality into a vehicle for impalpable correspondences.” READ MORE >>

Middleman Percy READ MORE >>

“New York City needs, and must have, a change. It must change completely in all of its institutions from top to bottom.”—CANDIDATE JOHN LINDSAY, a week before his election as mayor. READ MORE >>