Features

It was not about us; it was about them. that is the firstthing to understand about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and thePentagon. Many motives may have figured in the minds of those who directed thisatrocity. Perhaps they hate us, as some pundits say, because we are rich, orbecause of our liberal […]

Set among the bleak row houses of Depression-eraLiverpool, Stephen Frears’s new film, Liam, is yet another sepia-tinted tale of a cute, dimpled Catholic boy (played here by Anthony Burrows) whose diet consists mostly of bread, potatoes, and interminable school sermons that promise only hellfire and damnation. “What does sin do?” his teacher asks in a […]

The television moments that can even begin tocompareare few: On November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in front of 20million television viewers–more than 20 percent of the United States populationat the time. On January 28, 1986, millions of viewers–many of themchildren–witnessed the loss of American lives in real time as the space […]

There is no silver lining to the cloud of horror thatdescended on America September 11. Many are engaged in burying the dead andtending to the survivors or facing the awesome responsibility of satisfying thenational demand for action that serves justice rather than multiplying evil.Those of us who are going back to “business as usual” have […]

Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America By Stephen G. Bloom. Harcourt, 338 pages, $25.00 The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community’s Battle over Sex,Faith, and Civil Rights By Arlene Stein. Beacon Press, 267 pages, $27.50 A stranger comes to town. It’s one of the greatthemes of American literature and film, […]

It’s the little things that count. While some privacy advocates cry foulover the section in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s draft antiterrorism billthat extends certain wiretapping provisions to the Internet, an equally ominouschallenge to civil liberties lurks in an innocent one-word change. In Section 153of the proposed legislation presented to Congress on September 19, the word […]

Just how good is American liberalism’s inner ear? Defending an open society in the wake of September’s attacks demands that we strike the right balance between security and liberty, between the first of the Declaration of Independence’s inalienable rights and the second; and that we remind our countrymen that in a battle of ideals with […]

Many people will love Mulholland Drive, I am sure; and the fact that my admiration is mingled with profound annoyance perhaps says more about me than about the movie. It is David Lynch’s best film since The Elephant Man (which remains, for me, the pinnacle of his achievement). It is better than the goofy Eraserhead […]

War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals By David Halberstam. Scribners, 543 pages, $28.00 Inside David Halberstam’s mammoth opus is a good little book struggling to escape its author’s fatal ambition. The justly celebrated reporter apparently believes it possible to tell the story of U.S. foreign and military policy over a […]

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software By Steven Johnson. Scribner, 288 pages, $25.00 It’s easy to see why there aren’t more books like Steven Johnson’s Emergence: Only Johnson knows how to write them. Johnson was a founder and editor of Feed, one of the Web’s first and best “zines” (now moribund, […]