Q&A With Thomas Frank

Christopher Hayes : Conservatives & The American Right

The central thesis of Thomas Frank's new book, The Wrecking Crew, is that the kind of obscene depravity witnessed at the Department. of Interior is the natural result of the conservative philosophy of governance.

Speak Again, Memory

Greg Grandin : Non-Fiction

Readers of Fidel Castro's My Life will find explanations of the Cuban Revolution, but no apologies for its suppression of dissent.

Seeing Past the Gorgons

Barry Schwabsky : Fine Art

The New Yorker's art critic turns his eye toward the cultural summits.

Fathers and Sons

Joseph H. Cooper : South Africa

A teacher discovers that sixty years after its publication, Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country still stirs deep emotions about fathers and errant sons.

The Light Stuff

Melanie Rehak : The Short of It

The Kindle e-reader lightens your load, but can you curl up with it in bed?

Loss Lieder

Ange Mlinko : The Short of It

It's National Poetry Month, and that means cooked meat.

Victim 'Hood

Chris Lehmann : The Short of It

An account of the most recent installment in the nation's sick love affair with literary exhibitionists.

Final Fantasy

David Waldstreicher : History

Susan Faludi's Terror Dream made a provocative splash, but therapy is no substitute for understanding reality.

Eulogy for an Independent Bookstore

Jessica Teich

No chain stores or web sites can replace Dutton's in the hearts of the LA literati.

The Film We Dreamed

Charles Taylor : Film

In Zeroville, Steve Erickson explores New Hollywood's promise and doom and the dissolution of cinema into spectacle.

Norman Mailer

: Nation History

Ave atque vale, Aquarius.

The Political Doris Lessing

Dan Kellum : Public Figures & Intellectuals

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is every bit as political as her predecessors.

The Necessary Miracle

Kurt Vonnegut : War & Peace

Pamuk's Prize

Maria Margaronis : Turkey

If Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk is a political writer, it is by virtue of his sympathy for what is old and faded, for what no longer matters, or what never did.

Short Takes

Fatin Abbas & Christine Smallwood : China

Reviews of Half of a Yellow Sun, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and The City Is a Rising Tide.

Short Takes

Christine Smallwood & Katherine Ryder

Sloppy Seconds

Stuart Klawans : Publishing Industry

The plagiarism flap over Opal Mehta is essentially a story about clichés and stereotypes passing from one subliterary commercial product to another.

Behind Enemy Lines

Raffi Khatchadourian : Osama bin Laden

New scholarship sheds light on Osama bin Laden's rhetoric, charisma and complex religious and political vision.

John Yoo's Tortured Logic

Stephen Holmes : Law & Justice

The Berkeley law professor's carte blanche constitutionalism was a gift to the Bush Administration, offering legalistic justifications for lawless behavior.

The World According to Karen Finley

Bryan Farrell : Theater

Performance artist Karen Finley answers questions about politics, satire and her new book, a fantasy affair between George W. Bush and Martha Stewart.

The Tower of Babel

Lee Siegel : Biography

Jerome Charyn's Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel examines the life the revolutionary idealist murdered by Stalin in 1940 and explodes the literary myths that have thus far defined his works.

I Wonder As I Wander

Michael Gorra : Cultural Criticism & Analysis

Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost plumbs the mysteries of losing oneself and finding oneself in the realm of the utter unknown.