CD of the Week - Anton Rubinstein: Persian Love Songs
/19th-century Russian composer Anton Rubinstein has always been justifiably overshadowed by Tchaikovsky, but a new recording of his Persian music proves a surprising delight
Read MoreAn Interview with John Summers of The Baffler
/An interview with The Baffler's new Editor-in-Chief, John Summers.
Read MoreThe Baffler Returns
/The Baffler, an unapologetically radical journal that always punched above its weight, has had a troubled history. But a long-term publishing contract has rejuvenated it, and shown that an old formula is as relevant as ever.
Read MoreBook Review: Love, Fiercely
/He was a taciturn, bookish heir to staggering wealth; she was a high-spirited nonconformist 'new woman' - and, in a lost era of privilege and social progress, they were very much in love.
Read MoreBook Review: Empire of Shadows
/A new book dramatizes the adventurous - and bloody - opening of the American West.
Read MoreGood Enough
/A new book takes readers back to a time when, according to historian Ira Shapiro, politics could sometimes be noble and senators could sometimes be giants.
Read MoreInto the Breach: Battle Royale and Hunger Games
/The box office record-setting movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games is the latest incarnation of an unsettling children-as-prey plot that's been with us in one form or another for a long time - and never more vividly than in Koushun Takami's Battle Royale
Read MoreOdi et Amo
/The work of the Roman poet Catullus has always challenged the received idioms of poetry and society, and a daring new translation both underscores and undermines that iconoclastic Catullan stance.
Read MoreDownright Rude: Reading Catullus
/The raw sexuality of the Catullus' love poems keeps them alive even today, and the things he implied about Julius Caesar STILL can't be repeated in polite conversation - how do we deal with this young man who's always making us feel just a bit uncomfortable?
Read MoreThe People’s Prisoner
/When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 2010, it was given to an empty chair. Its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was in prison for advocating human rights in China. Though he is still incarcerated, a collection of essays sheds light on his thought and struggle.
Read MoreOn the Scent: Adventures in Perfume Layering
/You choose a perfume, you apply it, and you let it live and breathe on your skin - but you never, never mix and match. Or so goes the conventional wisdom. Our resident maitresse de parfums begs to differ - and shares some interesting discoveries
Read MoreAmerican Aristocracy - Harvard Pulpit: Boston Brahmin Liberalism
/To the quintessential virtues the Puritans lent to a fledgling republic - globality, philantropy, and autonomy - the 'speaking aristocracy' of the Boston Brahmins added one more: the love of learning
Read MoreMaking the List
/Long-time critic John Sutherland's latest book The Lives of the Novelists takes readers on a biographical tour of 294 creators' lives. But does it work? Long-time critic Steve Donoghue and novelist John Cotter try to figure that out.
Read MoreDesigning Desire
/Steve Jobs, the visionary predator who founded Apple and forged a new way of thinking about technology, wasn't a particularly nice man (as even his dutiful biographer must occasionally concede) - but was he a genius?
Read MoreA Man Could Stand Up: On Downton Abbey’s Second Season
/Unlike the soap operas with which it is often dismissively aligned, Downton Abbey is defined by change rather than stasis - by its beautifully produced attention to social evolution.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “The world is a great honeycombed thing”
/In Nick Harkaway’s altogether remarkable novel Angelmaker, blistering gangster noir meets Rabelaisian comedy
Read MoreWhen She Was Lost
/One hundred years ago this month, the luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, with the loss of over 1500 lives. The centenary has released a flood of books, including some gems not to be missed.
Read MoreFrom: The Butterfly Nail
/a poem
Read More"highly contrived and stylized"
/"Spending a summer night alone in Hannibal, watching the Mississippi River, staying in a rundown motel, and getting drunk by yourself ... that's a solid way to spend a day." -- A conversation with poet and cover artist Joshua Ware
Read MoreHumanitarian Disaster Romance
/In The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson evokes the brutality of North Korea's authoritarian regime by way of an over-the-top love story. Joyce W. Lee investigates whether torture and romance can coexist in one novel.
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