December 2009
5 posts
Ha-Joon Chang's New Book
23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
Which changed the world more profoundly: the Internet, or the washing machine? According to celebrated “heterodox economist” Ha-Joon Chang (author of the much-praised Bad Samaritans), it was the washing machine. In 23 Things …, Chang probes and pops many cherished “realities” of the new, flat world. For example: the ...
Thomas E. Kennedy's Copenhagen
HE wished to incorporate a sense of the city’s expanse into his heart so that he might know where he was at any moment in relation to the rest of the city and to the land around it, but he could not quite succeed in doing so. The city was not big, but it coiled and twisted. He was continually surprised to learn that two points he had thought distant from each other were, in fact, back to back....
"How did one edit Nabokov?"
WHILE I was still at Saturday Review in San Francisco, Nabokov’s Transparent Things was about to be published. He was my favorite living writer along with Christopher Isherwood. Different as Nabokov and Isherwood were from each other, both inspired me with a respect bordering on reverence and an excited anticipation for each new title. Nabokov was funny and wicked, Baroque and heterosexual;...
Bloomsbury Press to publish JFK letters
The Letters of John F. Kennedy, edited with accompanying text by Martin Sandler.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy led his nation for little more than a thousand days, yet his presidency is fondly remembered, not merely as a byproduct of his tragic fate. Kennedy steered the nation away from the brink of nuclear war, initiated the first nuclear test ban treaty, created the Peace Corps, and launched...