In further good news for New York students, Merryl Tisch has been elected the new chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents. The state’s three million school kids could not have found a better friend than Ms. Tisch, a gutsy reformer who gets things done while others are still clearing their throats.
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If you want to see what President Barack Obama’s vision for the future of American education looks like, look no further than East 120th Street, where high standards, committed teachers and a robust, private-sector approach have already been implemented with remarkable success at the Harlem Village Academy. If the White House needs a model for Read More
With Albany broke and distracted, the Bloomberg administration has proposed that the city take over Governor’s Island. It’s a good idea. Albany should graciously relinquish its role in developing the island, because it’s clear that it has no interest in the project.
Governor’s Island, a former Coast Guard base, was turned over to Read More
The year of my birth, 1985, saw the release of Back to the Future, wherein Michael J. Fox in acid-washed jeans returns to 1955 and lumbers through sleepy kitchens where the only gadgets are blenders and radios.
Could I exist in the year of my birth?
Life Sentences
By Laura Lippman
William Morrow, 344 pages, $24.99
Laura Lippman is a virtuoso. Prolific, yes—after a dozen novels in as many years, she chased What the Dead Know, her spellbinding drama of taken and mistaken identity, with the sturdy 10th installment in her Tess Monaghan franchise, then published a collection Read More
Many of the city’s and nation’s top Democrats are wringing their hands about going to work for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s reelection campaign. Democratic political operators who have hopped aboard the Bloomberg bus, such as Howard Wolfson, Andrea Batista Schlesinger and Basil Smikle, are finding themselves defined as traitors by dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, accused of betraying the Read More
In an ideal world, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority wouldn’t require an emergency bailout. But in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not living in an ideal world these days.
The M.T.A. presides over New York City’s lifeblood: Our mass-transit system. As the commuter trains, subways and buses go, so goes the city—and, for that matter, Read More
A world-class city in the 21st century deserves a world-class transportation system. For too many years, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has failed to provide New York with subway, bus and train service beyond the merely adequate. Unable to manage its finances and control costs internally, and hobbled externally by Albany’s stubborn refusal to green-light revenue-producing Read More
It was Ed Koch, not surprisingly, who best summed up Robert Morgenthau’s record as a prosecutor. “By virtue of what he has done,” Mr. Koch said, “he is the standard for district attorneys. As LaGuardia was for mayors, Morgenthau has been for district attorneys.”
Mr. Morgenthau, who announced last week that he will retire Read More
Every Man Dies Alone
By Hans Fallada
Melville House, 544 pages, $27
A violent dipsomaniac and morphine addict, institutionalized at 18 for shooting his close friend and later arrested for embezzlement, theft and the attempted murder of his first wife, Hans Fallada (né Rudolf Ditzen), author of one of Weimar Germany’s best-selling Read More
