Strangers in a Strange Land
Over the years, glimpses into the inner sanctums of the Hasidic world have come along via literary or scholarly works, a few television miniseries, and, once...
The Waste Land
A few years ago I attended an open house at the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant, southwest of Chicago. It was a lovely Saturday morning, and I...
Scenes of the Crime
John Banville’s first novel, Nightspawn, published more than fifty years ago, is set in Greece, which was then ruled by a military junta. The Irish protagonist,...
White Peonies
This is how it happens, one morningThe ground is only the ground, & thenGreen shoots through the rich brown loam.I learned the word loam when I...
Thinking Without Banisters
The proliferating crises of the American republic have prompted a revival of interest in the life and work of Hannah Arendt. Her book The Origins of...
In the Shadow of Slavery
In How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith evokes the horrors of slavery, from the discovery of the New World through the Civil War, and the...
Playing Fast and Loose
Rachel Cusk’s novels are merciless. She believes nerviness and irritation are necessary habits of mind to explore and put down on paper. Difficulty is her bread...
Liberation Psychology
They were out to get him. It was at once a source of terror and a form of tribute. Frantz Fanon was targeted as an Algerian...
Europe’s Great Emporium
In 1563 Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted two versions of the Tower of Babel, one in Antwerp and the other in Brussels, after he had married...
