May 21, 2007
Short Takes
Christopher Hitchens would be thrilled to hear about this (Dennett and Dawkins too). Seriously, though, I love von Neumann (who was a LOGICIAN, not a physicist, but whatever). “It was […]
May 19, 2007
About the Book…
We’re going to be taking some time to post thoughts by a few KR student associates about what books they love and why. This is the second in the series, […]
May 19, 2007
Take Two
Hey, Christopher Hitchens, if you see Mark Twain, ask him for his autograph. Mary Grabar, columnist for the conservative Townhall.com, has Hitchens pegged to join the other literary atheists in […]
May 18, 2007
Short Takes
I don’t remember if I linked this or not but I liked the book so much that I’m going to risk linking to this twice: the first chapter of Then […]
May 17, 2007
Take Two
Looking through the literary keyhole. Scotland’s Sunday Herald recently featured three short essays on the homes of writers from different perspectives. Journalist Alan Taylor recounts a visit to poet Norman […]
May 16, 2007
Take Two
Sink or swim? StarTribune.com of Minneapolis reports that BookSwim is just days away from its big dive into e-commerce. The company, founded by twenty-somethings George Burke and Shamoon Siddiqui, has […]
May 15, 2007
Short Takes
Michael Chabon on the wandering (Alaskan) Jews. “The request for Lincoln’s DNA was one of the first attempts to reach back in history and use genetic information to answer nagging […]
May 14, 2007
Reading Milton
It was during a session of my Major Figures: Milton course this spring that I mentioned the tradition of reading Milton’s Paradise Lost aloud. At least, I’ve heard of it […]
May 14, 2007
Short Takes
New Flannery O’Connor letters unveiled. Slightly relatedly: misfit stories. “Few can doubt that Western medicine has been a phenomenal success.” The Danish are coming! The Danish are coming! “Any real […]
May 11, 2007
Short Takes
Women: very good with the non-verbal communication. “Koestler, who never lost his strong Hungarian accent but whose mastery of English was such that he was undoubtedly one of the twentieth […]
May 10, 2007
Take Two
HBO thinks you’re stupid. Not only that, Tom Thayer, executive producer for the film version of historian Dee Brown’s classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, thinks you need your […]
May 10, 2007
Short Takes: The Single-Minded Edition
Oral sex causes cancer. Yes, really. “It is our belief that bookworms are born, not made. You know who we mean. The kid who sneaks in a paragraph when Mom’s […]