If timing is everything, one can imagine how pleased Günter Grass’s publishers were to have the Nobel Prize for Literature announced during the Frankfurt Book Fair this past October, where Grass was an honored participant. But there was a greater …
The Life and Times of Pancho Villa by Friedrich Katz Stanford University Press, 1998, 985 pp., $29.95 John reed once asked Pancho Villa his opinion of socialism. “Socialism—is it a thing?” Villa retorted. “I only see it in books, and …
It is hard to figure out what the stakes are in this year’s presidential election. “Compassionate conservatism” looks very much like a Republican version of the “third way,” and the third way looks more and more like a Democratic version …
Who wants to criticize a commentator as well-meaning and warm-hearted as Marshall Berman? He is a bard of urban life with an infectious enthusiasm for New York. For many years he has been singing of the joys of city streets …
Twice since John Sweeney became president of the AFL-CIO, the federation has held national conventions, and on each occasion Sweeney’s keynote address has been preceded by the same distinctive introduction. In 1997 in Pittsburgh, and again in 1999 in Los …
Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume Two, 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook Viking, 1999, 696 pp., $34.95 In divorce court, lawyers and judges often hear amazingly different stories about a marriage that has long disintegrated. In history, as well, there are also his …
Vietnam, The Necessary War by Michael Lind The Free Press, 1999 314 pp. $25 Michael Lind has written five books and edited another in just four years. Vietnam, The Necessary War makes that count at least one too many. This …
When Marshall Berman laments the decline of critical culture in America, he omits the implied and crucial qualifier: democratic. For there is no shortage of critical culture on the right, where free-market radicals inveigh against the remnants of state power …
The doctors of E.R., the lawyers of Ally McBeal, the teenagers of Dawson’s Creek. This year, as last, ensemble casts dominate television’s leading programs. The newest ensemble cast is, however, different from the others. It consists of a fictional president …
Martha and la Shadow are talking about sex. Martha is sitting beside me on the steps of a suburban apartment complex in San Salvador with her four-month-old baby girl in her lap. La Shadow sits across from us in a …
“Some books refuse to go away. They get shot out of the water but surface again and remain afloat,” Charles Kindleberger, the economic historian, wrote about Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time twenty-five …
E.J. Dionne The story is told of Mrs. O’Reilly being taken to the polls on Election Day by her son. She has always voted Democratic. Her son, a member of the upper middle class, votes for lots of Republicans. He …
Our country lacks critical culture today, brooks little questioning of “how human beings should live and what our life means.” So argues Marshall Berman in his remarks opening the symposium in this issue. We need, he proposes, some “jaytalking.” But …
Instead of critical culture, “struggl[ing] actively over how human beings should live,” we have a pale culture of critics. Censorship is a permanent irritation but serious-minded people (who can also be joyful, why not?) need to face up to the …
It’s difficult to cook without a recipe. Marshall Berman offers a three part one: powerful and provocative ideas, smart and imaginative people, and experimental neighborhoods where these people and ideas can interact. It sounds good, and I think Berman is …
