Books, Arts and Culture

You might have had this experience at one time or another: Armed with an opinion you may not have thought much about, you find yourself arguing with someone who disagrees with you on a topic of current events. As the debate proceeds, you begin to understand that you’re actually wrong. The arguments you make to […]

The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering by Michael J. Sandel (Belknap Press, 162 pages, $18.95) Most religious traditions today not only accept advances in medical science but regard them in some sense as a moral imperative. Christians say, “God helps those who help themselves,” Jews are urged to “repair the […]

A Divider, Not a Uniter: George W. Bush and the American People, the 2006 Election, and Beyond by Gary C. Jacobson (Longman, 192 pages, $14.60) The American Power Struggle: The Transformation of American Politics by Earl Black & Merle Black (Simon & Schuster, 304 pages, $26.00) With George W. Bush and the Iraq War currently […]

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Free Press, 368 pages, $26.00) Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 288 pages, $24.95) The world came to know Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a result of the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, with whom she had […]

The title of Gayle Pemberton’s essay “Do He Have Your Number, Mr. Jeffrey?” comes from an offscreen line in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The speaker was a babysitter, but the character’s infantile drawl — the old stereotype of black people as dawdling, servile simpletons — makes her sound as if she could use a babysitter […]

Visual Shock: A History of Controversies in American Culture by Michael Kammen (Alfred A. Knopf, 450 pages, $35.00) Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding by Tyler Cowen (Princeton University Press, 196 pages, $27.95) Like almost everything else about democracy, there is little agreement about what it means […]

An Economic Strategy to Advance Opportunity, Prosperity, and Growth by Robert C. Altman, Jason E. Bordoff, Peter R. Orszag, and Robert E. Rubin (The Hamilton Project, 28 pages, free at Hamiltonproject.org) How We Compete: What Companies Around the World are Doing to Make It in Today’s Global Economy by Suzanne Berger (Currency/Doubleday, 334 pages, $27.50) […]

Among film critics, there seems to be a longing for a filmmaker who can assume the mantle of American master. And for many of them, Clint Eastwood is just the man. Choosing Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima as the best movie of 2006, The New York Times‘ A.O. Scott wrote that with the death of […]

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster, 264 pages, $27.00) Before it was even released on November 14, Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, caused an uproar. The implied analogy in the title between contemporary Israel and the old South Africa drew a chorus of denunciations from Jewish […]

Al Jazeera has been called “the terrorist network,” a “beheadings channel,” and “a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden.” Yet there was Dave Marash, 64, Al Jazeera’s improbable anchor, sitting at his computer in a seventh-floor corner office in its K Street location, surrounded by mementos from his work as an Emmy-award-winning Nightline correspondent — a […]