Cultural Affairs

Reviewed by: 

Adam’s Peak, high above a rain forest in Sri Lanka (the former Ceylon or Serendib), rises 7,559 feet from sea level.

Reviewed by: 

“It's one thing to have a great idea (liberal education) and altogether another for these ambitious start-ups to survive and thrive. Remarkably, they do so.”

Reviewed by: 

“most importantly, Twitty reminds us that you don’t have to be Black or Jewish to love koshersoul.”

Reviewed by: 

“a rather gripping story of a series of objects and their makers and how exile and emigration created a ripple effect  . . . that is . . .

Reviewed by: 

The many readers and followers of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group will certainly be aware of her participation in this “bigoted blackface prank”—the Dreadnought Hoax —but are unlikely to ha

Reviewed by: 

“At times, people treat me like an opinion-vending machine,” writes Roxane Gray, the academic and author whose following has grown enormously.

Reviewed by: 

“a snarky, slapstick, clever buddy comedy in printed form where each riffs off the other’s talents, making Hell a hell of a lot of fun.”

Reviewed by: 

"Anyone interested in culture, history, and simply a rollicking good story, will find much to savor in these pages."

Reviewed by: 

“a quietly affecting memoir about family connection and disconnection.”

Reviewed by: 

“The lessons to be learned from Hitler’s rise to power are legion. Among them are the notion that . . . sociopaths ultimately are self-interested and . . . loyalty is a one-way street.

“deftly exposes the grip of monopolies over today’s creative labor markets, with well-written, detailed case studies . . .”

Reviewed by: 

“offers a more incisive and balanced examination of this elected office without the undue influence of the personalities of its recent occupants.”

Reviewed by: 

The End of Solitude is bright, readable, and absorbing—pure Deresiewicz.”

Reviewed by: 

“Historian James Scott’s new book about the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities in the spring and summer of 1945 restores LeMay to his rightful place in the pantheon of great Ame

Reviewed by: 

In the winter of 1949 the celebrated French avant-garde artist Jean Cocteau came to New York to give a talk at the screening of his latest film, The Eagle with Two Heads.

Reviewed by: 

“The Museum takes the reader behind the displays that present the public face of culture and science, to show how they have changed and will have to change to not just survive but

Reviewed by: 

While it’s not likely that humans will completely stop eating animals, it’s likely and desirable that we’ll eat, exploit, and harm far fewer animals than we do now.

Reviewed by: 

“This sweeping and novel synthesis exploring the arc of the human condition— its highly diverse forms of political organizing, and the future that lays in store for us—may well prove to be

Reviewed by: 

The Rage of Innocence is an important and timely book—an intelligent, compassionate, and indispensable argument on behalf of Black children.”

Reviewed by: 

“there are a lot of contradictions in modern Iran, and reading this book will give you many valuable insights into how the country functions—with repression and tolerance going hand in hand

Reviewed by: 

“Readers seeking a sterile understanding of profanity with all the lewdness and bawdiness sanitized away and air-brushed out will likely find Nasty Words beyond their comfort zone.

Reviewed by: 

What is an I-Novel? The I-Novel is a literary genre in Japanese literature.

Reviewed by: 

What is the foundation of civilization? The longtime answer has been the wheel. Other scholars claim that agriculture marks the beginning of civilization, or the domestication of animals.

Pages