Essays
1094 results
Page 81
A Christmas Village at City Hall?
It takes a Christmas Village, or: Church and state, perfect together
A Christmas Village was a clever marketing idea in 15th-Century Deutschland. But what is a medieval German shopping mall doing on the property of 21st-Century American taxpayers?
Essays
3 minute read
Literature's global future
The global future of literature, or: Why can't humanists be more humane?
Here we have a new subgenre of what I call International English: Africans interacting with white and black Americans. The way Mengestu weaves writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson and Tocqueville into his narratives of isolation and conflict is astonishing.
Essays
5 minute read
Changing habits: What I learned about nuns
Forbidden fruit: My fantasy life among the nuns
As a suburban Catholic grade school student, my meager education in the mysteries of the opposite sex came by watching— and fantasizing about— nuns.
Essays
6 minute read
Economic lessons from the Far East
I have seen the future, and it's in the Far East
If today's recession is a global crisis, why do the Taiwanese and Japanese seem less traumatized than we Americans? As I've learned from personal experience, they've learned how to adjust their behavior in the face of adversity.
Essays
6 minute read
My father's clothes
What remains of my father
I'm sure this gesture has been repeated a million times by a million women in mourning: a father's coats and shirts and ties and hats, handed over to an uncle or a brother.
Essays
3 minute read
My cancer could be prevented
Me, Mike and a certain cancer
Mike Douglas and I are both battling Stage 4 head and neck cancer. We share something else in common as well: An awareness that this particular cancer, at least, could be prevented.
Essays
4 minute read
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Mighty Ryan has struck out
The five stages of baseball grief
Depressed because the Phillies failed to win their third consecutive National League pennant? Broad Street Review's sports therapist will see you now.
Essays
less than a minute read
Sugarhouse Casino: Color me convinced
How I learned to stop worrying and love my casino
Concerned Philadelphians say the new Sugarhouse Casino will ruin its surrounding neighborhood. But if you lived in that decaying neighborhood, as I do, you'd feel differently. You might just perceive it as our best hope for the future.
Essays
6 minute read
Apologies: Ginni Thomas vs. Anita Hill
I'm so very, very sorry, or: What hath Ginni Thomas wrought?
Clarence Thomas's wife recently phoned Anita Hill out of the blue to ask Hill to apologize for accusing Justice Thomas of sexual harassment 19 years ago. Recognizing that Ginni Thomas was on to something, I placed a few calls of my own.
Essays
3 minute read
Michael Vick, scapegoat
The dogfighter within us
I hold no brief for dogfighting, a cruel enterprise conducted solely to entertain the bloodthirsty. But before we condemn Michael Vick, we might look in the mirror.
Essays
2 minute read