lea carpenter
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How Susan Sontag Made Making Lists Sexy
Gide, Sherwood Anderson, Ludwig Lewisohn, Faulkner, George Moore, Dostoyevsky, Huysmans, Bourget, Arsybashev, Trumbo, Galsworthy, Meredith. Plus, the poems of Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Tibullus, Heine, Pushkin, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Apollinaire, and the plays of Synge, O'Neill, Calderon, Shaw, Hellman. Read More
April 14, 2009 | In Business & Economics
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On Politics and Censorship in Modern Times
Given the international public’s unique readiness to equate “business” with “criminal,” it’s auspicious timing for the question of corporate money’s role in politics to return to the Supreme Court. Read More
March 27, 2009 | In Truth & Justice
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Ideas Have Consequences and Words Matter
As Noah Feldman shows us in "A Prison of Words," his Times Op-Ed piece yesterday, "refinements" filed recently by the Justice Department regarding the Guantanamo Bay lawsuits showcase the subtlety with which the Obama Administration employs editorial prowess—and restraint. Read More
March 19, 2009 | In Media & Internet
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Les Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, has written a new book, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy. One piece of advice: Read it! Read More
March 18, 2009 | In Truth & Justice
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Roubini Fiddles While America Burns
Does everyone need to suffer? Should an image of Nouriel Roubini as standard-level modelizer trouble us? Probably not. As much as we might like the idea of him holed up in his—economics laboratory?—minding the meltdown and writing his Roubini Global Monitor posts, Wise Men have proved through the ages that there’s no direct correlation between interest in women and effectiveness as global leaders. Read More
March 13, 2009 | In Arts & Culture
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A Call to Reawaken Great Literature
Publishing, like the rest of the world, is in crisis. But the world needs wise publishers—and wise novelists—more than ever. Those willing to take creative risks, on controversial issues and varying communication styles, would reawaken brilliant writing. Read More
March 9, 2009 | In World
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Searching for Greatness and Finding It
David Orr raised the question in Sunday's Times Book Review of what constitutes “greatness” in poetry, writing, “our largely unconscious assumptions work like a velvet rope: if a poet looks the way we think a great poet ought to, we let him or her into the club quickly—and sometimes later we wish we hadn’t.” Read More
February 24, 2009 | In Belief, Science & Tech
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How Richard Koo Got His Groove Back
It may be we are past the Lessons To Learn stage in this financial crisis, but some, like a few of those very smart people who maintain jobs in finance, claim the new guru for our time—with all due respect to Professor Roubini—is Richard Koo, Chief Economist for Nomura and a former economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Read More
February 17, 2009 | In Inspiration & Wisdom
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Reports of Wikipedia Editors Are Grossly Exaggerated
The Wikipedia page for John Updike claims to have last been modified today, on February 9, 2009. While Wikipedia allows unique disclaimers for subjects recently deceased—Updike died January 27th, of lung cancer—is there any merit to proposing some stronger editorial controls in those cases of major changes to certain noteworthy entries? Read More
February 9, 2009 | In Media & Internet
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It turns out that Wise Domestic Intelligence and Enlightened Civil Liberties are not mutually exclusive. In fact, we need them both. And we need to closely monitor their relative balance—as well as their consistency and clarity. A new working paper authored by the Council on Foreign Relations’ adjunct senior fellow Daniel Prieto details the landscape of the current counterterrorism debate, and the new challenges in what he terms the war about terror. Read More
February 6, 2009 | In Belief
