Last night the venerable Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club of Brooklyn held their holiday party at the Hudson River Yacht Club.
The club has long been a behemoth in South Brooklyn politics, with its ability to turn out the vote and connections to elected officials. Judging by the turnout, the club also seems to have recovered Read More
The heat of summer seems to bring out obscure oddities plucked from the overstocked greenhouse of Western classical music. For some time, no festival has been more avid in pursuit of the unfamiliar than Bard SummerScape, whose guiding spirit is Bard College president Leon Botstein, a conductor and scholar who loves footnotes as much as Read More
Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828 , by Walter A.
McDougall. HarperCollins, 638 pages, $29.95.
Every chronicle of European settlement of the New World must
include a boat. The boat you choose will shape the story you tell. Start with
the Niña , the Pinta and the Santa Maria , Read More
As a cultural battleground, the teaching of history never excited the, er, passions associated with controversial movie-making or prime-time exhibitionism.
Nevertheless, there was a time not so long ago when everybody including the future Vice President’s wife, Lynne Cheney, had an opinion about the nation’s history curriculum. Conservatives argued that fuzzy social studies had turned Read More
Lawyer fled apartheid to study law, bring Jefferson to South Africa; won Fulbright, fell in love; rakes in the Benjamins, for business and charity alike.
Marco Masotti made partner at one of the top New York City law firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, at the age of 32. That may be reason enough Read More
Far-Flung Fare
Fit for a Founding Father
“Any questions about the menu?” asked the waiter.
I should have said, “Pull up a chair!”
Black edamame ravioli with ginko nut, pork shank with gobo root, and snapper with coconut candlenut foam are just some of the dishes on the menu at this new Read More
Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America , by Jason Goodwin. Henry Holt, 321 pages, $26.
It’s easy to forget that many aspects of the American past were as messy as the present of “failed states” that we’re engaged with now. I was in Afghanistan when I read Greenback , Jason Goodwin’s Read More
The parties I go to are not the sort of affairs where people exchange stock tips or lay the groundwork for insider trading; we’re more likely to compare restaurants and argue over movies and books. But this summer, there has been furtive chortling over bull-market bulimia and each week’s fresh revelation of corporate malfeasance.
With Read More
Travel that involves the consultation of maps, avid sightseeing and strenuous culture-vulture activity is enough like work that it absorbs the mind and waylays introspection and despond. It’s the “mindless” vacation, the idyll, that poses a problem. I can endure unalloyed pleasure for only a few days, and then the alloy begins to creep in-the Read More
Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum , by Tyler Anbinder. Free Press, 532 pages, $30.
In the 19th century, New York bustled and swelled, new buildings sprouted like weeds, de-rusticated bumpkins made fortunes trying their luck in the city and Read More
