When Burning Man, the radical arts festival and temporary city erected in the Nevada desert each year, announced that the theme for 2017’s event was “Radical Ritual”—derived from religious symbologies worldwide—many regular attendees viewed this... Read More

ONE OF THE MOST SAVAGE reviews ever written was published in 1818 in response to a collection of verse by a somewhat unknown poet. The critic, John Wilson Croker, declared, “the author is a copyist... Read More

  Leonardo Da Vinci, took his place across the tiny aisle from me, and buckled the belt of his seat. I was certain it was him. Too timid to speak, I listened as he told... Read More

[caption id="attachment_18103" align="alignright" width="250"] Hasui Japanese Woodblock Print Shimoda 1937[/caption] The moon’s a fat convict of the stick-stalk trees then escapes, a desperado loose in the yard, a bruising undresser of raw light, naked of... Read More

BOOK BY IAN MCEWAN NAN A. TALESE / DOUBLEDAY 2016 197 PP.; $24.95 THE PROTAGONIST and first-person chronicler of the British writer Ian McEwan’s new novel Nutshell is quite the worldly fellow: eloquent, erudite, cultured,... Read More

BY MARTY KLEIN PRAEGER, 2016 208 PP.; $24.00 I WAS ONE of those teenagers who really did read the articles in Playboy, though not before carefully exploring and sometimes masturbating with the centerfold in full... Read More

BY SARI NUSSEIBEH STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016 288 PP.; $29.95 AS A WESTERNER for whom the intellectual history of Islam is something of a mystery, reading Sari Nusseibeh’s timely and sweeping new book was like... Read More