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We Think We're the Center of the Universe

An unusual and potentially polarizing work of cosmology, Universe in Creation highlights some fascinating coherences and connections in the fabric of existence.

Books

Armando Iannucci's 'The Death of Stalin' Is Both Expectedly Humorous and Chillingly Harrowing

The Death of Stalin is rarely out-and-out hilarious, but the performances are top-notch and the writing is thoroughly witty, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

Film

Spike Lee's 'BlacKkKlansman' Is a Provocative, Entertaining Mess

The new Spike Lee Joint is irreverent and challenging, but it fails to rival contemporary social powerhouses like Sorry to Bother You and Blindspotting.

Film

Fascism Shows Its Everyday Face in 'The Order of the Day'

Éric Vuillard's work is a short, sublime history that provides a necessary and contemporary service by stripping away the mythic quality of Nazi fascism.

Books

Huddled Masses and New Media: 'How the Other Half Looks'

How America's ur-ghetto, New York's Lower East Side, changed the way we see ourselves.

Books

On the Tight Confines of Madeleine Albright's Cold War Intellectual Straitjacket

The status quo of the past 30 years facilitated a massive transfer in wealth and public resources away from the average American and into the hands of a wealthy minority; a radical coup if ever there was one. Yet it was achieved democratically. A response to Madeleine Albright's Fascism: A Warning.

Books

"Pounding Humility into You Permanently": On Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain was loved not for his wit or charming temerity, but for confronting us with our own alienation and cultural isolation. He reminded us that there were connections to be made over the dinner table.

Television

In 'The End of Outrage' An Historian Peers into His Ancestral Irish Shadows

Culling local storytellers' accounts, land valuation records, field maps and more, Mac Suibhne exposes the clash between the secret society of the "Molly Maguires" in their homeland with the forces of law and order in this history of Ireland.

Books

'Bring the War Home' Digs into the Trenches of the White Power Movement in America

Historian Kathleen Belew painstakingly details the influence of the Vietnam wartime experience on the evolution of white power ideology.

Books

Suffering the Inscrutable: The Ethics of the Face in Dreyer's 'The Passion of Joan of Arc'

The film is imbued with a painterly quality wherein the not-quite static framing of the human visage is its main concern, its aesthetic gambit, and the source of its affective impact.

Film

Did Women Writers Change the 20th Century New York Intellectual Scene?

Michelle Dean's Sharp challenges readers to consider what we gain from reading the lives and works of women writers and how they shaped cultural and socio-political thought in the 20th century and beyond.

Books

'The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.'

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a monolith of a man in his time and remains so today. But he was also a rebel, a necessary disrupter, a thorn in the feet of all who stood in his way.

Books

Hardly an Accident: Harry S. Truman's 'Accidental Presidency'

A. J. Baime offers his readers an "aw shucks" story of an American Everyman thrust into a position of awesome power and somehow "makin' good".

Books

Tony Richardson's 'Tom Jones' Turns the "Angry Young Men" Art Movement on Its Head

For the titular Tom and those of the "angry young men" art movement, all the world is a courtroom, judging and evaluating them, condemning them to a life they would not choose. It just so happens that Tom enjoys his captivity.

Film

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An unusual and potentially polarizing work of cosmology, Universe in Creation highlights some fascinating coherences and connections in the fabric of existence.

The Death of Stalin is rarely out-and-out hilarious, but the performances are top-notch and the writing is thoroughly witty, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

The new Spike Lee Joint is irreverent and challenging, but it fails to rival contemporary social powerhouses like Sorry to Bother You and Blindspotting.

Éric Vuillard's work is a short, sublime history that provides a necessary and contemporary service by stripping away the mythic quality of Nazi fascism.

How America's ur-ghetto, New York's Lower East Side, changed the way we see ourselves.

The status quo of the past 30 years facilitated a massive transfer in wealth and public resources away from the average American and into the hands of a wealthy minority; a radical coup if ever there was one. Yet it was achieved democratically. A response to Madeleine Albright's Fascism: A Warning.

Religious conservatives have spent as much time studying popular culture as they have condemning it, and they have arguably learned its lessons more effectively than social progressives.

Anthony Bourdain was loved not for his wit or charming temerity, but for confronting us with our own alienation and cultural isolation. He reminded us that there were connections to be made over the dinner table.

Culling local storytellers' accounts, land valuation records, field maps and more, Mac Suibhne exposes the clash between the secret society of the "Molly Maguires" in their homeland with the forces of law and order in this history of Ireland.

Historian Kathleen Belew painstakingly details the influence of the Vietnam wartime experience on the evolution of white power ideology.

The film is imbued with a painterly quality wherein the not-quite static framing of the human visage is its main concern, its aesthetic gambit, and the source of its affective impact.

Matthew Bowman provides a dutiful if rather too clinical examination of how Americans have clashed or convened as to what Christianity encompasses and how this concept alters as the nation debates itself.

Michelle Dean's Sharp challenges readers to consider what we gain from reading the lives and works of women writers and how they shaped cultural and socio-political thought in the 20th century and beyond.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a monolith of a man in his time and remains so today. But he was also a rebel, a necessary disrupter, a thorn in the feet of all who stood in his way.

A. J. Baime offers his readers an "aw shucks" story of an American Everyman thrust into a position of awesome power and somehow "makin' good".

For the titular Tom and those of the "angry young men" art movement, all the world is a courtroom, judging and evaluating them, condemning them to a life they would not choose. It just so happens that Tom enjoys his captivity.