Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style Revisited
Hofstadter argued that McCarthyism was simply the latest iteration of a longstanding American tradition.
Michael J. Totten
· 9 min read
Books
A collection of 203 posts
Get Ready for the Return of the Abortion Novel
The abortion novels that proliferated in the late 1960s were filled with characters who are forced by carelessness and circumstance to make the most agonizing of personal choices.
Kevin Mims
· 26 min read
The Western Reinvented. Again.
It has been 30 years since a Western last won the Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards. That was in 1992 and the film was Unforgiven, directed by Clint Eastwood, who also starred in it alongside Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, and Richard Harris. On Sunday, Jane Campion’s The
Kevin Mims
· 9 min read
Heading Into the Atom Age—Pat Frank’s Perpetually Relevant Novels
NOTE: The following essay contains spoilers. British journalist Ed West recently published an excellent essay entitled “Children of Men Is Really Happening,” in which he tied together the shrinking fertility rate wreaking demographic havoc across the globe and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, which is also wreaking havoc across
Kevin Mims
· 11 min read
Against De-Materialization: Tom Wolfe in the Age of NFTs
You cannot lose, you cannot win: the present includes the past and the future. ~Marshall McLuhan I In the summer of 1970, TV-Ontario filmed Tom Wolfe in conversation with Marshall McLuhan on the lawn of McLuhan’s home in Toronto’s Wychwood Park. Towards the end of their amicable chat,
Julia Friedman
· 15 min read
Authentic Immediacy—A Tribute to the Political Fiction of Frederick Forsyth
When the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR collapsed, one might have assumed that Cold War fiction would become irrelevant. That hasn’t turned out to be the case with Frederick Forsyth’s work. Consider, for instance, this passage from his 1979 novel, The Devil’s Alternative: The Union of
Kevin Mims
· 13 min read
PJ O’Rourke—A Tribute
The thing about PJ O’Rourke, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 74, was that everyone wanted to be around him. By “everyone,” I don’t just mean the right-wingers I hang out with, most of whom share PJ’s classical-liberal politics, but also neoconservatives like Bill
Charles Murray
· 2 min read
“A Pleasure to Burn”: We Are Closer to Bradbury’s Dystopia Than Orwell’s or Huxley’s
For decades, it has been common to call authoritarian new laws, norms, or government actions “Orwellian.” In 1984, George Orwell so brilliantly portrayed a nightmarish future that his name became synonymous with almost anything one wishes to describe as oppressive. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, meanwhile, provided a rather
David S. Wills
· 9 min read
Didion in El Salvador
While Joan Didion felt compelled to write about Latin American culture and politics because everyone else was doing it, she didn’t understand them very well.
Charlotte Allen
· 17 min read
The Maus That Roared
Maus was important to my life, but there's nothing wrong with protecting kids from encountering the world’s worst horrors before they are old enough to understand them.
Thomas P. Balazs
· 9 min read
A World of Waste, Stripped of Transcendence: James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ at 100
Few novels become institutions, to have departments rigged up around them, whole constituencies and spheres of scholarship, as works of lifelong study, fascination and confusion. Ulysses, whose publication centenary will be observed on February 2nd, is one such book. Like Marx’s Kapital, Joyce’s door-stopping opus has kept academics
Jared Marcel Pollen
· 13 min read
George Makari's ‘Of Fear and Strangers’—A Review
French conservative radio host Éric Zemmour is mounting a presidential run, seeking to steal the mantle of right-wing populism from Marine Le Pen. Not only does the 63-year-old firebrand want to limit the number of immigrants who can come to France—a standard campaign promise for politicians of this type—
Zaid Jilani
· 6 min read
How D.B. Cooper and the Golden Age of Air Piracy Changed Aviation Fiction
Frank Sinatra's “Come Fly With Me” was the best-selling album in the United States for five weeks in 1958, but the irony of its popularity (or, perhaps, the source of its aspirational appeal) is that practically none of us could take up the offer to "glide, starry-eyed&
Kevin Mims
· 33 min read
High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism—A Review
A review of High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism by David S. Wills. Beatdom Books, 555 pages. (November 2021) I. In High White Notes, his riveting new biography of Hunter S. Thompson, journalist David S. Wills describes Thompson as America’s first rock star reporter and
Kevin Mims
· 25 min read
‘It works! It works! It works!’: Jonas Salk and the Vaccine that Conquered Polio
Americans turned on their radios, department stores set up loudspeakers, and judges suspended trials so that everyone in the courtroom could hear what Francis was about to say.
Paul A. Offit
· 8 min read