
Politics
AMERICA IS IN DECLINE: SIGNS, CAUSES, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBAL POLITICS
Non-Fiction Reviews
The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness – by Jack El-Hai
May 12, 2026Walter Jackson Freeman was a man gifted with energy, optimism and an ice pick.
Biography
Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America
May 12, 2026Since our society began its retreat into Social Darwinism tricked out in the guise of laissez-faire...
Fiction Reviews
Kornwolf by Tristan Egolf
May 12, 2026Kornwolf raises the question of whether or not one can endure one’s heritage. We all have...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes – by Alex Vilenkin
May 11, 2026As childhood gave way to adulthood, I came to the realization that my greatest attraction to...
Non-Fiction Reviews
In Character: Actors Acting by Howard Schatz
May 11, 2026Imagine 32 famous actors looking you straight in the eye and flirting with you. (Marlee Matlin!...
Mystery
The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes by Caleb Carr
May 11, 2026Those writers whom the gods would destroy, they first tempt into trying to imitate another writer...
Environment
The Hundredth Meridian by Chilton Williamson
May 11, 2026Chilton Williamson definitely cares about the West. Every essay in his collection The Hundredth Meridian –...
Biography
James K. Polk by John Seigenthaler
May 10, 2026Author John Seigenthaler has written an interesting and informative biography of the eleventh president of the...
Non-Fiction Reviews
How Israel Lost: The Four Questions
May 10, 2026There’s an old saying among the Jews that goes something along the lines of: we don’t...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream
May 10, 2026But rather than trace the rise of the institution of eating, Fagone focuses on the eaters...

Non-Fiction Reviews
Henry Adams and the Making of America by Garry Wills
May 10, 2026In Adams, Wills has chosen a slippery, famously evasive subject. Henry Adams (1838-1918) was an eccentric,...

Non-Fiction Reviews
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles
May 10, 2026Oh, no—the cry is almost involuntary—not another Beatles book! What more could anyone possibly say? The...

Non-Fiction Reviews
Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding
May 10, 2026Study of the American founding fathers has become a hothouse industry. The capacity of the American...

Non-Fiction Reviews
Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward – by Charlyne Berens
May 9, 2026Some less than exhaustive research suggests that this book is a first: a campaign biography published...

Non-Fiction Reviews
The Essential Grizzly – The Mingled Fates of Men and Bears – by Doug Peacock and Andrea Peacock
May 9, 2026The style of this book is intriguing. Doug has written several short stories, called Portraits, based...

Fiction Reviews
Hannah Coulter – by Wendell Berry
May 8, 2026There was a time, not many decades ago, that most of America’s population labored on family...

Art & Design
The Dawn of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
May 8, 2026The statue is nicknamed “The Lady of Brussels” because its home museum is in Belgium. It...

Television
House Recap: ‘The C-Word’ (Season 8, Episode 19)
May 8, 2026That wasn’t as bad as I feared. Wilson’s alive (for now) and it looks like next...

100 Greatest Gangster Films
100 Greatest Gangster Films: Charley Varrick, #78
May 8, 2026Few filmgoers noticed Charley Varrick when it came out in 1973. After all, The Godfather, that...

Music
Album review: Deuce’s Nine Lives
May 8, 2026...and we have achieved triple threat; misogyny, racism and homophobia. Quite an achievement for a guy...

Movies & TV
100 Greatest Gangster Films: The Godfather, #1
December 20, 2025The Godfather made careers, most notably those of Francis Ford Coppola and Al Pacino, despite the...
Movies
In Defense of The Social Network: Movie demonizes sexism, doesn’t glamorize it.
October 16, 2026Fiction vs. reality: Eisenberg and Zuckerberg. First things first: I’m in the business of paying close...
Architecture
Farewell to the Future: Iconic “Sleeper” House is Foreclosed On
October 27, 2026By 1973, the “technological faith, confidence, and competence” Hines sees embodied in the modernism of the...
Fiction Reviews
Book Review: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
October 18, 2026Pasternak ranges the individualism of Zhivago against the heartless society that is being erected by the...
Movies
Catching Up With 2010: Marmaduke
October 9, 2026A scant few minutes into Marmaduke there’s a fart joke. Right after this fart joke Marmaduke...
The Fourth Wall
All Of This Will Happen Again: Step Up 2 The Streets Revisited!
October 5, 2026Earlier this week we took a look at the first Step Up, the hit machine that...
Germany
Art Review: Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy and Germany, 1918-1936
October 14, 2026Chaos and Classicism tells the story of good intentions that went terribly wrong. After the carnage...
Movies
Movie Review: Step Up 3D
October 3, 2026Step Up 3D is a good movie. Not an instant classic, but a genuine celebration of...
Video Games
Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
October 22, 2026Oddly enough, it’s this great multiplayer mode that most throws the rest of the game into...
Best Movies
The Weekly Listicle: Misleading Movie Titles
October 25, 2026Sometimes a movie's title appears to be a secret known only to the writer. Sometimes it...
The Fourth Wall
Mad (wo)Men: The Complexity of Womanhood in “Mad Men”
October 11, 2026The cast of AMC’s “Mad Men:” Vincent Kartheiser, Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery, Jon Hamm, January Jones,...















