Essays
1091 results
Page 101
Home design: My ideal kitchen
The kitchen has become the social center of the American home. But most designs fail to satisfy homeowners’ yearning for beauty, relaxation and personal identity. Why not take a lesson from those 17th-Century Dutch kitchens celebrated by Rembrandt and Vermeer?
Essays
5 minute read
Letter from Iceland
Can Broad Street Review’s irrepressible octogenarian curmudgeon cheapskate professor survive a week alone in Iceland? Does a bear sleep in the woods? And if he can make Reykjavik into Paris, why not you?
Essays
5 minute read
Liberal arts, Balkanized
Tenney L. Davis was a noted chemist who took pleasure in attending lectures on non-scientific subjects like aesthetics. Today he’s forgotten, which says something about how far along the road of compartmentalizing knowledge we have traveled.
Essays
5 minute read
Mayakovsky and the Russian soul
At a time when Russia is beating up on the Republic of Georgia, it helps to know that Vladimir Mayakovsky, the brawling boisterous laureate of Russian Futurism, is as Russian as Pushkin.
Night Wraps the Sky. By Vladimir Mayakovsky; translated and edited by Michael Almereyda. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008. 304 pages, $27.00. www.amazon.com
Night Wraps the Sky. By Vladimir Mayakovsky; translated and edited by Michael Almereyda. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008. 304 pages, $27.00. www.amazon.com
Essays
4 minute read
A watershed election (not)
This year’s election should be the left’s opportunity, but the conventional liberal alternative is timid and palsied. And Barack Obama’s performance is increasingly disappointing, not to say alarming.
Essays
6 minute read
China's "humiliation,' reconsidered
Forget the Chinese obsession with their national “humiliation.” We are just beginning to feel the power of this vast and brilliant people as they gather themselves, and us, along with the rest of the world.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. By Simon Winchester. HarperCollins, 2008. 336 pages; $27.95.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. By Simon Winchester. HarperCollins, 2008. 336 pages; $27.95.
Essays
4 minute read
Up against the Human Services bureaucracy
A grand jury recently documented the horrific life and death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly, a cerebral palsy victim who starved to death while under the “care” of Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services. It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be, as I can attest from personal experience.
Essays
7 minute read
Obama as a literary figure
In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd recently equated Barack Obama with Jane Austen’s prideful Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. A careful parsing of Dowd’s column suggests that the Democratic candidate is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
Essays
5 minute read
Lost in Lyon
Don’t talk to me about the best-laid plans etc. I just spent 15 hours in Lyon during which all my pre-plans went completely awry— yet this pit stop was astonishingly productive. Of course it helps if you’re a retired professor with a gift of gab and a talent for making lemonade out of lemons.
Essays
6 minute read
South America's 'Gringo Trail'
What compels the sons and daughters of wealthy nations (like me) to cram a few pieces of clothing into a backpack and spend months exploring Third-World South America? Mostly we travel to temporarily escape the materialism of our homelands.
Essays
9 minute read