Book Reviews

Somewhere in the yawning archives of WFMT Radio in Chicago is an ancient tape recording of a Bob Zimmerman/Dylan interview with the estimable Studs Terkel, which is utterly, inevitably, charmingly  and teasingly fabricated. The encounter with the unfailingly genial Studs disclosed a rich fantasy life as told by Dylan’s painstakingly constructed imaginary persona, flourishing all the folk…

Novelist and screenwriter John Nichols, a staunch but wonderfully wry leftist, is best known for the comedic laid-back subversive prose style of The Milagro Bean Field War, later made into Robert Redford’s second film (after Ordinary People) as director.  But even that illustrious novel only forms the opening salvo of  what became the “New Mexico trilogy”, including what…

The period from 1878 to about 1882 is usually known as “The Land War” in Irish history.  Under the guidance of the recently released Fenian prisoner, Michael Davitt, Irish tenant farmers took on their landlords.  For the more moderate, the goal was to secure the “Three Fs” – Fair Rent, Free Sale and Fixity of Tenure.  At its…

We cannot choose the life into which we are born. Part of our human trajectory involves coming to terms with our biological and social legacies. It is poignant, then, to witness the efforts of parents risking everything to imbue choice into the genetic lives of their offspring. It is this human desire, this wish for…

Movements fly, ascending, descending, ebbing, shifting, with overlapping stories building on each other, ideas crashing across borders. This is what I thought of when I heard about Christophe Broqua’s study Action = Vie: A History of AIDS Activism and Gay Politics in France, the English translation of his history of ACT UP Paris, by Jean-Yves…

One of the more annoying products of the four Trump years has been a certain genre of very lamentable journalism in which legacy media platforms seek to understand, and come to terms, and even empathize, with Trump’s supporters. Often appearing in high-end outlets like the New York Times, these articles – such as an egregious…

Apparent antitheses between Anthropology and Psychoanalysis are not difficult to adduce. Since its 19th Century stirrings, Anthropology has been committed to illuminating the multiplicity encompassed within the category of “the human.” This dedication to difference has typically pivoted on the concept of culture, that universal that is only ever particular. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, treats a…

Mark Harris’ fine biography of Mike Nichols, upon publication, was getting more media attention than the Trump impeachment hearings – almost. Harris comes well prepared to deliver a detailed, precise, well-formed and innovative study. He does not scrimp on the detail, which can be, I confess, rather exhausting. Indeed as exhausting as the indefatigable Nichols…

We cannot choose the life into which we are born. Part of our human trajectory involves coming to terms with our biological and social legacies. It is poignant, then, to witness the efforts of parents risking everything to imbue choice into the genetic lives of their offspring.  It is this human desire, this wish for…