Jan. 25
Allen Ginsberg was here and he asked me if I had ‘Kaddish’ and I said yeah and spent the rest of the dream looking for it. (Poem is reprinted from A Fresh Young Voice from the Plains, power mad press, 1981, republished by Fonograf, 2026.)
Read MoreFor Allen Ginsberg, on His 100th Birthday (3 June 1926 – 3 June 2026)
Dear Allen, as you foresaw, we are living in a Fallen America. Masked Fed ICE gangs raid blue state cities at will, filming it all: Kustoms enforcers, licensed to kill, rampage thru American streets, Gangland arm of the mammon-obsessed, unitary executioner, Mocking the law, pepper spraying the Constitution in the face. A Squatter King’s words…
Read MoreLetter to Allen on the State of the State, March 2026
Ah Allen, your centennial is coming up and the world keeps moving. Sometimes it moves forward, but it’s often difficult to tell—amid the zigzags and the circling back, bloody oil spills and ICE-y shotgun blasts, robot drones with robot handlers dropping big dumb bombs on countries most Americans couldn’t find on a map. Allen, did…
Read MoreCynthia Miller-Idriss’ Man-Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism
This is definitely the right book at the right time. The straightforward style covers many of the best known cases of male aggression from the news, social media feeds, and the internet. As a chronicle of the worst gender aggression of our times, Cynthia Miller-Idriss lays out in stark detail the hatred of women that…
Read MoreJoseph Strausbaugh’s Duchamp Takes New York
It is difficult, even now, to grasp how many revolutions—artistic, political or economic—exploded during the 1910s and how thoroughly they have been digested and turned against their best purposes. Or perhaps this is too easy and gloomy of an interpretation. A century is a blink in human history, and the effects have not been erased,…
Read MoreJeremy Varon’s Our Grief is Not a Cry for War
With the US interventions from Iran to Venezuela, Jeremy Varon’s Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror is a reminder of all that can go wrong. “War is hell,” said General Sherman as Union troops moved to Atlanta in 1864; war is hell, then and now,…
Read MoreGeorge Lundskow and Lauren Langman’s Visions of a Sane Society
Lauren Langman and George Lundskow’s new book, Visions of a Sane Society: Fromm and Critical Theory for a Free, Democratic, and Sustainable Future, is a bold effort to update Fromm’s ideas and make them relevant to the present conjuncture. The authors put forth many interesting and unique insights that build on Fromm’s thought while in…
Read MorePeter Richardson’s Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine
Peter Richardson has given us a sharp, concise history of Rolling Stone, since its beginnings. When Ralph Gleason and Jann Wenner teamed to found Rolling Stone in 1967, the US was mired in Viet Nam, the media was trumpeting the “Summer of Love” and a counterculture it barely comprehended, and the Manson murders were to…
Read MoreImplementing Project 2025: Day One and After
I won’t be a dictator, “except on day one” – Donald Trump Axios (Basu & Davis, 2024) holds that President Trump promised to make 59 major policy changes the first day of his second term. The president’s declaration about limiting dictatorship to “day one” may lack veracity, but he has followed through on many of…
Read MoreDomination and Chaos: India’s Radical Conservatism
Ideology is the most devilish variation of the lie – Hannah Arendt To speak of reaction is to counterpose it with progress. This terminology is not helpful. Stable issues of political life, such as legitimate authority, justice, transparent government, clarity on the means vs ends problem; along with issues of character such as fair-mindedness; respect…
Read More