In 1935, the third year of Hitler’s Third Reich, Sinclair Lewis published a novel called It Can’t Happen Here, speculating on the possibility that fascism might come to America. This spring, the legal scholar Cass [ Read Article ]
Robert Jay Lifton set out long ago to be our catastrophist: the chronicler of the grim age of the twentieth century that included the two most terrible wars in history, and, with the advent of [ Read Article ]
I have been writing occasional opinion pieces about Donald Trump since his presidential run began three years ago. Like most commentators, I assumed it to be a vanity candidacy, and saw it as part of [ Read Article ]
Nancy Clearwater Herman is perhaps best known for her large, richly complex quilts and hangings. The present exhibit at the Cosmopolitan Club shows another aspect of her art. The mostly small oil paintings on display [ Read Article ]
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s just-concluded tour of Germany, Austria, and Israel has been the most controversial in its history. No, visiting Germany, where a resurgent right wing openly invokes the symbols of Nazism, wasn’t the problem. [ Read Article ]
Finding romance as one gets older doesn’t come easily. Such is the plight of Isabelle, the heroine of Claire Denis’ Un Beau soleil intérieur, wretchedly mistranslated as Let the Sunshine In in its American release. [ Read Article ]
The “West,” as that term has been understood since the end of World War II, is cracking up. It consisted, broadly, of the US, Canada, and Western Europe, the latter slowly recast as the European [ Read Article ]
Weighing in on the subject of waterboarding, the notorious practice of simulated drowning widely practiced on suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush administration, our current president, Donald Trump, proclaimed that he not only approved [ Read Article ]
Modern American foreign policy in the Middle East was formed by three pivotal events: the determination to control the region’s oil resources through public policy and oil corporations after World War I; the decision by [ Read Article ]
America’s retreat from its century and a half commitment to public education has now become a rout. There has not been a greater betrayal of our country in my lifetime. There is no more disastrous [ Read Article ]
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