Dr. Robert Zaller

Music

Early and Late Beethoven, with Fauré

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, winding down its current season, has saved some of its best for last. The Ébène Quartet, beginning a year-long worldwide tour, plans to record all of Beethoven’s quartets in live [ Read Article ]
Academics

When a University Loses Its Soul

More than six decades ago, the sociologist C. Wright Mills warned of a “new universe of management and manipulation” that had entered American life, and that threatened to fundamentally alter its character and undermine its [ Read Article ]
Film

You Can’t Go Home Again: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia at International House

Andrei Tarkovsky, the exact contemporary of the French filmmaker Francois Truffaut (1932-1986), made only seven feature films in his thirty-year career, but their prestige has elevated him to almost mythical status. Ingmar Bergman called him [ Read Article ]
Politics

Where American Democracy Is Now

Thanksgiving this year included a sigh of relief that America had managed to hold a more or less normal midterm election in which the anticipated red tsunami did not materialize and voters apparently decided, Solomonically, [ Read Article ]
Academics

Outsourcing the Future: How America Has Abandoned Its Commitment to Public Education

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 ]
Politics

Democracy Gets a Reprieve

The votes are still out in the 2022 midterm elections, partly a result of the patchquilt system of fifty states, each with its own rules of when and how to count them. Dear Georgia couldn’t [ Read Article ]
Art

Nancy Herman: Totems

The major part of Nancy Herman’s small but select show at her gallery in Narberth covers a single long wall, but it says a great deal about looking, and the how and why of what [ Read Article ]

Shafts of Light, Slants of Dark: Nancy Herman Paintings at the Cosmopolitan Club

Art

June 25, 2018 0

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 ]

Hello, Tyranny: Life in the Age of Trump

Politics

February 13, 2017 0

The incessant flow of noise and static from the Trump White House—occupied territory on American soil—is designed, among other things, to conceal the fundamental new reality of our political situation: that we have an unelected [ Read Article ]

Politics

How Has Donald Trump Affected Your Writing and Life?

June 25, 2018 0

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 ]

Politics

Daughter of the Revolution: The Conscience of Liz Cheney

June 4, 2021 0

The most famous newspaper headline in American history appeared in The Chicago Daily Tribune on November 3, 1948, reporting the results of the presidential election just held: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The Tribune, a devoutly Republican [ Read Article ]

Music

Heroism, Romantic Style: The Curtis Orchestra Plays Brahms and Strauss

June 12, 2017 0

The idea of the hero goes back in Western literature to Homer’s Achilles, and, in mythology, to Samson and Hercules. Alexander the Great fit the mold as a conqueror, and so did Napoleon, the original [ Read Article ]