Victor Davis Hanson examines the Trump Presidency through a classical lens, casting the Donald as a tragic hero straight out of Sophocles: a narcissistic savior whose mercurial personality is both the source of his...
The volume here reviewed is the second edition of a book first published in 2002. I reviewed it favorably (with some reservations) in 2003. A... Read More
It is difficult not to feel that JRR Tolkien's name destined him for philological studies and perhaps in the end for the creation of... Read More
“Sometimes I try to imagine a world without literature…of what would be lost if literature had never existed,” writes... Read More
Norway doesn't have a world-class philosopher (Kierkegaard was Danish). Karl Ove Knausgaard declared at the end of his previous book that he... Read More
When asked what he likes most about poetry, Forrest Gander, who won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry on Monday for Be With — a... Read More
Where was William Shakespeare living in the 1590s? Around 1597/8, as has been known since the 1840s, Shakespeare was recorded as... Read More
One of the most celebrated diplomats of his generation, Richard Holbrooke helped normalize U.S. relations with China; served as U.S.... Read More
At the height of its glory and power, ancient Athens sponsored theatrical performances of tragedy, featuring the greatest playwrights of the... Read More
n 1800, after nearly three centuries of the transport of African slaves across the Atlantic, there were major slave economies in the... Read More
In 1961, a young LBJ aide wrote the greatest political novel you've never heard of—and then vanished into drug-fueled obscurity. A new... Read More
If Friedrich Nietzsche were alive today, what would he think of our times? “The nations are again drawing away from one... Read More
Paul Hollander, Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, died last week, aged 86. He was a remarkable... Read More
The philanthropic industry now mirrors colonial structures and reproduces hierarchy, thereby doing more harm than good—or so argues... Read More
Near the end of Gene Wolfe's 1980 novel The Shadow of the Torturer, the narrator, Severian, an exiled executioner, has what he thinks is... Read More
With his third novel, Original Prin, Randy Boyagoda confirms his position as one of the best satirical writers today. More immediately funny... Read More
Think of the last time you had something to celebrate. If you toasted the happy occasion, your drink was probably alcoholic – and... Read More
Victor Davis Hanson examines the Trump Presidency through a classical lens, casting the Donald as a tragic hero straight out of Sophocles: a narcissistic savior whose mercurial personality is both the source of his...
In the summer of 1937, Ernst Bloch, the redoubtable German-Jewish literary critic, utopian humanist, and exile from Nazi persecution,... Read More
The winners of the Pulitzer Prizes, which honor excellence in journalism, arts and letters, were announced on Monday. Here are reviews... Read More
CRB: Let's start by talking about Donald Trump and you. In the first sentence of the first chapter of your book Making It, recently... Read More
Victor Hugo's 19th-century literary classic Notre-Dame de Paris has soared to the top of France's online bestseller list after the fire that... Read More
Bret Easton Ellis is ready for you. The author of Less Than Zero (published in 1985, when Ellis was still a Bennington undergrad)... Read More
How did liberal democracy arise from illiberal soil? In other words, how did Europe in the 16th century, when religious adherence was... Read More
Joseph Stalin was evil. This statement is no longer terribly controversial, at least among Western historians, as it once was in the... Read More
Many of us think that rapid environmental change is a quintessentially modern crisis. Today, temperatures are soaring, topsoil is washing... Read More
On November 1980, The New Yorker devoted most of an entire issue to a single essay. Beyond the extravagant length, the essay... Read More
Several years ago I set out to write a novel that would, not only excite and entertain (sermons that put one to sleep are useless), but would... Read More
I first came across Philip Larkin's poem ‘This Be the Verse' when I was 18 in the late 1970s. You know the one: ‘They fuck you... Read More
Historian and author Jill Lepore talks about nationalism, populism, and the state of America with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Lepore argues... Read More
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Robert Caro has spent decades researching and chronicling the lives of notable men.His biographies have... Read More
Joseph Stalin was evil. This statement is no longer terribly controversial, at least among Western historians, as it once was in the last century. The story is very different inside Russia, where an industry has arisen to glorify Stalin and the state that he created, alongside other famously bloody Russian leaders such as Ivan the Terrible. This literature, however, is considered an embarrassment Read More
n 16 October 1957, Albert Camus was eating lunch at a restaurant in the heart of Paris's Latin Quarter. Partway through the meal, a young man from his publisher's office appeared. The young man dismissed the waiter, and informed Camus of what had just been announced on the radio: he was receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature.One week later, Camus was interviewed on French television. However, t Read More
What was it like to be a queer child in South Carolina during the Great Depression? Guy Davenport, with his incomparable gift for re-creating lost pockets of time, offered one plausible glimpse in his short story “A Gingham Dress,” published in 1990. The scene is a roadside mart, where a hillbilly family is selling homegrown produce out of their car. The father keeps to himself in the front se Read More
