American Republic, Now Available from Amazon
I’m pleased to announce that my book, American Republic: Essays on the Nature of Politics, is now available in Kindle and paperback from Amazon.com. American Republic includes the original book, plus...
View ArticleCulture Shut Down
US National Park Police and National Park employees direct visitors away from the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial yesterday. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images via The Grio) It was hard not to feel a sense of...
View ArticleLou Reed and the Power of Art
Lou Reed and Vaclav Havel in 2005 (via The Wall Street Journal) Lou Reed died today at 71. The standard obituaries have noted his profound influence on popular music since the 1960s and 1970s. Dig a...
View Article“We have met the enemy and he is us”
(Walt Kelly, via Language Log, University of Pennsylvania) Attending a conference of public diplomacy professionals and academics last week at the U.S. State Department, a particular comment made by a...
View ArticleThe Interpreter of Comedies
The extended appearance of Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina on The Colbert Report Feb. 7 is worth watching for any number of reasons, top among them are hearing two victims of...
View ArticlePunk Is Not Dead
Today my review essay of Masha Gessen’s latest book, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The book is a testament to the courage of the...
View ArticleDo We Need A Cultural Foreign Policy?
The historical archives of Sarajevo, attacked and burned on Feb. 6, 2014 (via http://www.arhivsa.ba/) This month in Bosnia-Herzegovina citizens protested government paralysis in every major city in the...
View ArticleWhat LEGO Taught Me
Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! For my birthday my wife bought me the LEGO kit Benny’s Spaceship. For anyone who’s seen The Lego Movie you’ll get the joke. It’s the outrageous monster outer...
View ArticleWhat matters most
Via Grist magazine. A recent opinion article by Roger Cohen about a book and polling data demonstrating a gulf in transatlantic public opinion struck me as a windy but representative example of the...
View ArticleJoan Didion, Californian
Joan Didion seized my attention early, before I wrote for myself. Assigned “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” in high school, I read with amazement her cool, detached descriptions of things I recognized...
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