In reviewing the fifteen-volume cataloging of the massive Robert Lehman Collection (‘An Astonishing Record of a Vast Collection‘, New York Review of Books, 7 March 2013), Walter Kaiser writes: Like the collection itself, its impressive catalog may well be the last of its kind–and there aren’t, as I’ve said, very many of its kind to beginContinue reading “Walter Kaiser on Online Instability vs. Printed Stability”
Tag Archives: New York Review of Books
Kinds of Nostalgia
In reviewing Hadara Lazar’s Out of Palestine: The Making of Modern Israel, (‘Palestine: How Bad, & Good was British Rule, New York Review of Books, 7 February 2013) Avishai Margalit writes The term “nostalgia” was coined by a Swiss doctor, Johannes Hofer, in a dissertation submitted to Basel University in 1688. It was meant to be usedContinue reading “Kinds of Nostalgia”
The Elusive Art of the Book Review
A dozen or so years ago, my first ‘official’ book reviews were published. Both of them had been commissioned–that sounds so grand!–by the APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy: Philosophical Naturalism by David Papineau and What Is This Thing Called Science? by Alan Chalmers. (The always-ahead-of-the-curve APA website’s archive is incomplete and I cannot find copies of these reviews any more. PerhapsContinue reading “The Elusive Art of the Book Review”
The Emperor Has No Clothes Ritual
In ‘Expect to be Lied to in Japan‘ (New York Review of Books, 8 November 2012), Ian Buruma writes: I decided to go on a little trip to Matsushima this summer because I had never seen this particular “Great View,” even though I had in fact been there once before, in 1975. Then, too, IContinue reading “The Emperor Has No Clothes Ritual”
David Shulman on Asia’s Autonomous Discovery of Modernity
In his review (‘The Revenge of the East, New York Review of Books, October 11, 2012) of Pankaj Mishra’s From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), David Shulman provides an interesting disputation of Mishra’s claim that Asia’s–as yet incomplete and flawed–encounter with modernity began via and through a series of interactionsContinue reading “David Shulman on Asia’s Autonomous Discovery of Modernity”
United Against Teachers on Teacher’s Day
The Facebook statuses of some friends of mine who live in India acknowledge September 5 as the date for the observance of an Indian holiday, not, I think, ‘observed’ with any particular enthusiasm in the United States: Teacher’s Day. (A confession: I did not realize there was a Teacher Day in the US till IContinue reading “United Against Teachers on Teacher’s Day”
Tim Parks Overrates the Indispensability of Copyright Regimes
Tim Parks has an interesting article on copyright over at the New York Review of Books Blog. (Parks concentrates almost exclusively on copyright for literary works and does not mention movies or software executables.) There are some interesting observations in it, which lead up to a puzzling conclusion. Roughly, copyright law is indispensable because itContinue reading “Tim Parks Overrates the Indispensability of Copyright Regimes”
The ‘Guilty Pleasures’ of ‘Friday Night Lights’
When Lorrie Moore wrote her New York Review of Books review of the Friday Night Lights phenomenon—the television series, the book, and the movie–she made sure she prefaced it with talk of ‘guilty pleasures’: On my way to a Manhattan book party recently my mind was wandering to cultural guilty pleasures: sprightly but inane movies,Continue reading “The ‘Guilty Pleasures’ of ‘Friday Night Lights’”
Should Latin America End the War on Drugs?
Should it? That’s the question asked in today’s ‘Room for Debate’ over at the New York Times. Well, depends. Only if it does not want to persist in its present commitment to the expensive, counterproductive and catastrophic-to-civil-liberties course of action that the United States is currently pursuing. The real question–as most would acknowledge–is not whetherContinue reading “Should Latin America End the War on Drugs?”
‘A Ramble of Banalities’: Hitler’s Table-Talk
In his review of Heike B. Görtemaker’s biography of Eva Braun (Eva Braun: Life with Hitler, Knopf, translated by Damion Searls, reviewed in The New York Review of Books, April 26 2012, Vol LIX, Number 7), Anthony Beevor notes: Hitler’s “table-talk,” a ramble of banalities and crassly sweeping judgments on history and art, recorded asContinue reading “‘A Ramble of Banalities’: Hitler’s Table-Talk”
Samir Chopra 