…this passage about Marie Antoinette strikes me as poignant: She sported towering bouffant hairdos, including the “inoculation pouf,” a forbidding confection that featured a club striking a snake in an olive tree (representing the triumph of science over evil) to … Continue reading →
It comes as absolutely no surprise to learn that former president George W. Bush does not miss politics. In a recent interview he said: I crawled out of the swamp, and I’m not crawling back in. In general there are … Continue reading →
I’ve just finished my latest book group assignment, Waiting For Snow in Havana, a memoir by Carlos Eire about his childhood in pre-Castro Cuba, the Castro takeover, and the circumstances under which he was able to leave Cuba for the … Continue reading →
…of Paul Ryan? I think they’re at least perturbed by him, not only because he’s smart and articulate, but because he’s got an incredibly likeable demeanor. That goes against the narrative about Republicans. It’s hard to pin the “callous, cold” … Continue reading →
I had never heard of chemist Fritz Haber until a couple of days ago, when I watched a TV dramatization of his story that was so melodramatic that I thought it was surely an exaggeration. But surprisingly, when I looked … Continue reading →
Anyone who studies history and humanity knows about the technique of the Big Lie. The summary version of the idea of the Big Lie is that propaganda works, and truth has little to do with its efficacy. In fact, the … Continue reading →
Vincent Van Gogh on his relationship to posterity: As a painter, I will never amount to anything important. I am absolutely sure of it.
Continue reading →So far, the information we’ve gotten about James Holmes doesn’t really fit the portrait of the usual perpetrator of mass murder. That doesn’t mean that, as more facts emerge, he won’t seem to have been unstable and isolated, and to … Continue reading →
[NOTE: This is another installment in my series on literary leftists.] You may know Will and Ariel Durant as the authors of a series of books on world history called The Story of Civilization, which I read one long-ago summer … Continue reading →
About a week ago marked the 75th anniversary of the disappearance of Juliet Poyntz. She’s hardly a household word, but her story is not atypical of those highly-placed Communists who turned on their former colleagues. Poyntz was a Barnard history … Continue reading →
Obama’s speech on economics yesterday was remarkable in that it failed to impress even the sycophants at MSNBC: And Dana Milbank of the WaPo was not the least bit happy with Obama, either: I had high hopes for President Obama’s … Continue reading →
…should Obama be more like LBJ? Perhaps he should have asked, “could Obama be more like LBJ?” But either way the answer is (drum roll please): NO, because the question is absurd. This is like asking should (or could) a … Continue reading →