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“A Dream Deferred” is a thoughtful book, especially for those who lived through and remember Jesse Jackson’s presidential runs. Abby Phillip gives us Jackson warts and all, the maddening egotism and opportunism, and the rumors of infidelity. Informed, highly readable, and even exciting at times as she recounts the thrills of the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.
The tech bros must have stumbled onto Abraham Heschel’s book about the Sabbath.
Life after prison often felt like one step forward, four back. In the desert years, what made Carole Alden’s life meaningful was trying to make conditions better for her animals. While the world struggled with wars, political, economic, and social chaos, she was grateful for qualified solitude.
At Trenton and Independence Hall, Lincoln wondered at the willingness of our patriotic ancestors to imperil their lives for a nation that did not yet and perhaps would never exist.
British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton’s move to Scuderia Ferrari signals a second act, a new opportunity to emerge victorious not only on the track but also to continue pushing the limits of what is possible beyond it.
The real world is filled with transformative “second chance” stories—true tales of people who at some point in their lives answer the summons of a new path.
More than ten thousand species are now critically endangered. Humans have clear-cut forests, paved grassland, overharvested, overfished, and overhunted. Much of the existing ground is being strangled by honeysuckle, kudzu, vetch, cheatgrass, and various exotics. Can we get a second chance?
The “hatchet man” for President Nixon, and a chief architect of both Nixon’s “dirty tricks” and the team of “Plumbers” who schemed to smear, libel, drug, and, in at least one case, even assassinate the president’s vast list of “enemies,” lived not just to endure the stain of a criminal conviction and seven months in federal prison, but seemingly transcend it. Watergate historians, however, are not so kind.
If you have ever cared for an addict, you know the desperate feeling of no easy solutions. Science has no inoculation or cure, so treatment is a combination of lengthy and often expensive behavioral and pharmacologic therapies that still depend on “the individual’s desire to change,” as LAM puts it.
He seemed almost happy. Maybe because the river, the night, and the freedom felt good to him. He played one of his favorite songs, “My Girl” by the Motown group The Temptations, music from his youth before he went to prison.
Published less than a year after her loss to Donald Trump in the 2024 election, 107 Days is an extraordinary feat in its turnaround time. However, in its haste to hit the shelves, there may not be enough distance in former Vice President Kamala Harris’s assessment of her campaign to truly offer the clear vision of hindsight.
Kostya Kennedy’s Pete Rose is a tour de force display of journalism, top-flight writing, and excellent research. It is rich in biographical details, yet it is not meant to be a biography in the typical sense, a comprehensive cradle-to-grave account of a life. The book is more of an exploration of Pete Rose as a celebrity athlete, his rise, his fall, and how he has managed both, or how managing his failures hinges entirely on how well he can throw around the weight of his accomplishments.
Heritage is collective, aesthetic, and performative. It is something you inherit. Whereas history, on the other hand, is authored, linear, personal. It is something you produce. Museums often allow Africans the former but not the latter. Our art is heritage; European art is history. Our works are culture; theirs are achievements.
In a museum, we often try to understand what a painting means and where it is coming from, placing ourselves at the center of the experience. This sculpture removed me completely. I was forced to look outward instead of inward, as if I were seeing a world that existed without me.
Critical perspectives on the books, culture, and ideas that shape our world
It was all so amusing when it happened to other people. To old people. Such fun to say dryly, when one’s parent scrambled, frantic, to find their glasses, “They’re on your nose.” But the other day, I was the one hunting for the glasses on my nose. Granted, I have…
Unpacking the ideas behind today’s most compelling works
“A Dream Deferred” is a thoughtful book, especially for those who lived through and remember Jesse Jackson’s presidential runs. Abby Phillip gives us Jackson warts and all, the maddening egotism and opportunism, and the rumors of infidelity. Informed, highly readable, and even exciting at times as she recounts the thrills of the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.
You might say, as the youngsters do, that Fetterman did his party “a solid” simply by winning, especially as that seemed not so assured during the campaign. The problems Fetterman encountered during his Senate campaign are mostly what “Unfettered“ is about.
‘Phasers on Stun!’ may not make future efforts at assembling a franchise-spanning overview of Star Trek obsolete, but Britt’s comprehensive approach makes such labor redundant, at least for now. He analyzes, anatomizes, celebrates, and criticizes every extant Trek television series and film in sometimes granular detail, making ‘Phasers on Stun!,’ despite its sloganeering subtitle, too accomplished to ignore.
A look back at the ideas that shaped previous editions
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Insights into the cultural shifts and societal changes shaping our time
Sport, like the university, like any institution, is a human construction. It reflects the fears and desires of those who manage it. To demand that it remain apolitical is to demand that it remain unexamined. What would it mean to refuse that demand consistently?
Today’s influencers, panicked by AI and its ability to mimic or replace us altogether, preach a new vitalism. Often masculine, sometimes misogynist, this energy is wild and brave and noble, a birthright that cannot be replaced.
I was railing again about Eve. For Eve. Why should she take the rap for humanity’s fall, just because she had a healthy curiosity? Then I remembered Pandora, whom we blame just as angrily for the unleashing of our woes. But think of living with that box, gazing at it…
The unbearable whiteness of being….
Essays on science, technology, and the natural world
It was all so amusing when it happened to other people. To old people. Such fun to say dryly, when one’s parent scrambled, frantic, to find their glasses, “They’re on your nose.” But the other day, I was the one hunting for the glasses on my nose. Granted, I have…
Insights on creativity and the creative process
Cartoons are one of my favorite things on Instagram, especially when they touch on humor, confusion, sadness, practical philosophy, and cultural critique.
Stories of the people and places that shape our world
Harold Compton tries, in the expansive sense of the words time and history, to focus himself on the present. Because that word history, he says, can overwhelm you.But his job is one rooted in the past. Of his people. And not of his people. Of the Jesuits, too.
Many recent documentaries about comic entertainers show the alienation, sadness, and self-perceived failure in the lives of people we think of as “funny” and investigate connections among hardship, talent, and drive. While “Being Eddie” is interesting, and Murphy is good in it, if somewhat restrained, it has little such complexity.
The new initiative aspires to acquire an FM frequency one day, and these volunteers who banded together to save community radio in St. Louis are a smart, tough, resourceful crowd. I expect to report their further success one fine day.
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