This Month's Articles
REVIEWING
The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Selections From the Daybooks 1922-30
By Carl Van Vechten
Reviewed By Joe Johnson
On leave from his position as the New York Times' assistant music critic, found himself living in Paris during the early part of the 20th century. Van Vechten, was just coming into his own as a writer, and witnessed first hand the brash arrival of modern art, he returned to his job at the New York Times in 1909 a changed man and soon became the first American critic of modern dance. At that time, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, and.....Read More
INTERVIEW
A Law Professor Who Tells Tales
An Interview with Stephen Carter
By Herb Boyd
For many years after he wrote Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, (Basic, 1991) Stephen Carter was content to dash off an occasional article or op-ed piece and to devote time and attention to the classroom at Yale University where he has been a professor of law since 1982. But in 2003 Carter emerged with fanfare in the fictional realm with The Emperor of Ocean Park (Knopf, 2002) which meant that the midnight oil .....Read More
REVIEWING
Helen Clay Frick: Bittersweet Heiress
By Martha Frick Symington Sanger
The Baroness of Art
Reviewed by Russell Burge
The Frick Collection is a lesser-known outpost amidst the colossal museums of the Upper East Side, a neoclassical sanctuary nestled within the chaos and hubbub of Manhattan. Its airy corridors lead back in time, to the venerable masters of the Western canon, and to the discerning tastes of nineteenth .....Read More
REVIEWING
Fear Be Thy Name
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
Reviewed by Fred Beauford
I witnessed first hand the tremendous power of the Jewish Lobby in this country as a journalist in the 80’s. I watched as a marginal Louis Farrakhan was almost instantly elevated as one of the most important leaders in the black community, even though, outside of his home base in Chicago, he wasn’t even on the radar screen of most Americans, even ....Read More
REVIEWING
The Last Mughal—The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 by William Dalrymple
The Arrogant Ones
Two Reviews by Jane M. McCabe
Second review, next article on Indian Summer
It is not often that readers of history are offered two excellent histories published within the same time-span, that, if read back to back, add enormously to one’s understanding of the events that shaped a country’s destiny. This is what we have with The Last Mughal and Indian Summer.
The first chronicles the Indian Uprising of 1857; the second,......Read More
REVIEWING
Indian Summer—The Secret History of the End of an Empire
by Alex von Tunzelman
Review by Jane M. McCabe
Indian Summer, Alex von Tunzelman, recalls “Only ninety years separated the British victory at the gates of Delhi in 1857 from the British eviction from South Asia through the Gateway of India in 1947.
But while memories of British atrocities in 1857 may have assisted in the birth of Indian nationalism, as did the growing separation and mutual suspicion of rulers and ruled that followed the Uprising, it was not the few surviving descendants of the Mughals, nor any of the old princely and feudal rulers, who were responsible for Indians’ march......Read More
BEYOND BOOKS: Film
Rona’s Reel Take
Oscar & Hollywood
Too Many Movies, Too Little Time
By Rona Edwards
It is that season again -- when movies are thrust out there on screens, mostly in limited release in New York and Los Angeles, just so their hats can be thrown into the Oscar ring. Screenings have abounded here in Hollywood, as they do in New York. Studio marketing teams have been working overtime to reserve every possible theatre and screening room, laying out their Oscar campaigns to beat all Oscar campaigns and celebrate the .....Read More
BEYOND BOOKS: Theater
Sanford and Son Go to the Dark Side
Review by James Petcoff
American Buffalo
By David Mamet
Directed by Evan Bergman
American Buffalo is a play as simple and as complex as its name. The coin of the title represents two aspects of America marginalized by the white man’s greed masked behind the self-righteous veneer of manifest destiny and laissez-faire capitalism. The face of the coin (a old nickel) depicts a Native American, a symbol of a disenfranchised....Read More
BEYOND BOOKS: Music/Travel
The Fearless Wayfarer
Traveling Notes: Jazz in Santa Fe, Olive Oil in Tuscany
By Margaret Johnstone
Traveling not only expands the experiential lens of your mind, but it also tones the muscles of your heart. My own travels this past summer in the United States and this autumn in Europe have taken me to some very special places uniquely individual in culture and place, but somehow united....Read More