The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by Steven Greenhouse Knopf, 2008, 345 pp., $25.95 Love the Work, Hate the Job: Why America’s Best Workers Are Unhappier Than Ever by David Kusnet Wiley & Sons, 2008, 270 pp., …
Supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for all their differences, have in the course of this emotional primary season come to view the Democratic Party’s nominating process as seriously flawed. To be sure, Obama’s enthusiasts would seem to …
A luxurious hotel in rural Hertfordshire on the outskirts of London might seem a surprising venue for a conference of the world’s self-declared progressives. But members of the democratic center-left power elites, mainly from Europe, but with a sprinkling from …
When it comes to finding the bad guys of Olympic history, all roads lead to Germany. Writing in the New York Times at the height of the torch relay fracas in April this year, Edward Rothstein pointed the way: “If …
Getting from Montreal to Makassar is not a picnic. During the thirty-six hours my partner and I spend in transit, we debate whether it is more important to teach public health or philosophy in Indonesia, because this is the reason …
Like many members of the moviegoing public, I didn’t rush to see Home of the Brave (2006), In the Valley of Elah (2007), Redacted (2007), Grace Is Gone (2007), A Mighty Heart (2007), Badland (2007), or any of the other …
Turn the page, turn the page! No, not the one you are reading, not just yet. It is the country that needs to turn onto a new page. It is hard to think of an aspect of our political, social, …
Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again by David Frum Doubleday, 2008, 213 pp., $24.95 The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History by Donald T. Critchlow Harvard University Press, 2007, 359 pp., $27.95 They Knew They Were Right: …
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein Scribner, 2008, 748 pp., $37.50 For decades, liberal scholars and journalists have been trying to figure out how it came to this. How did we end …
In The Vast Majority, a book published thirty-one years ago, Michael Harrington wrote of a trip to India during the reign of Indira Gandhi. He mused on the chutzpah of reporting his impressions after only a few weeks in this …
In the best 60 Minutes tradition, a China Central Television (CCTV) producer sent me out last summer to the planned “Jade River” real estate redevelopment for some investigative reporting on the fate of Beijing’s historic hutongs or alleyways. I was …
Walter A. O’Brien, Jr. Photo courtesy of Julia O’Brien-Merrill On a clear, chilly day in November 2004, then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney stood inside a large white tent set up on the brick plaza outside Boston City Hall. Romney wasn’t there …
How do we know when something starts or when a new phenomenon becomes a major trend? We don’t have a “big bang” theory for the “second wave” of the women’s movement. The common wisdom has been that it began when …
Since September 11, 2001, we have been fighting the so-called “war on terror” without the active participation of all three branches of government. For the first several years, a very aggressive president acted alone, without Congress or the Supreme Court. …
Barry Gewen’s review of Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise (Winter 2008) contains a factual error that illustrates the flaw in his argument. He describes the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood” as having a “pentatonic melody”—a melody restricted to five notes—which …
