It wasn’t a great week to try and place a news obituary in The New York Times. First Terri Schiavo died. Then there was the Pope, whose passing received the sort of coverage you’d assume would be reserved for an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, or the day we make contact with intelligent Read More
Lots of lurid stories have been written about how hard it is
to get into college these days. Excuse me, but when I was applying to schools a
generation ago, Harvard wasn’t exactly giving away free cruises or tote bags to
anyone who would consider spending the following four years in the frozen
wastes of Read More
American National Biography , by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, general editors. Oxford University Press, 24 volumes, $2,500.
The American National Biography is a literary milestone, a kind of Human Genome Project for the advancement of historical understanding. Here, in 24 volumes and 17,453 life sketches, is the DNA of who and what Read More
The View From Alger’s Window: A Son’s Memoir , by Tony Hiss. Alfred A. Knopf, 241 pages, $24.
If the Alger Hiss case is any indicator, we’ll still be arguing about O.J. Simpson well past 2058. The Hiss case, the “Trial of the Century” in 1948, was a referendum on the “hot-button” issues of the Read More
