The social books website Goodreads has an incredibly handy user-generated list of The New York Times’s best-selling fiction and nonfiction books of 2013. Most notable was just how many of 2013’s nonfiction bestsellers were written by conservative television and radio personalities. Bill O’Reilly was most prolific: three books of his, Killing Kennedy, Killing Lincoln, and Killing … Read more
[ZUNYI, CHINA] It was the start to another sweltering day in the little Chinese town of Zunyi. I ambled to a nearby food stall for breakfast, where a vintage TV buzzed lazily in the background. A reporter was reciting updates from the Korean Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco. Suddenly, the clink of chopsticks and … Read more
For five decades, David Bowie has been a cultural chameleon in musical history: “Space Oddity” played in the background as BBC broadcast the first footage from the moon. The deep V-necks and laced-up red boots of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane could drive crowds insane. Few aren’t lured by Bowie’s lyricism in “Let’s Dance.” Bowie … Read more
It could not be in Jesus’ name, Beneath the bedroom floor, On Christmas night the killers Hid the bomb for Harry Moore. It could not be in Jesus’ name The killers took his life, Blew his home to pieces And killed his faithful wife. Langston Hughes, “Ballad of Harry T. Moore” When It All Began … Read more
Six glass towers. Six for the six concentration camps constructed in Poland, their names engraved on the pathway that guides visitors through the towers. Majdanek, Treblinka. Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec. Six for the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. And at night, light shines up from the bottom of the towers to illuminate the … Read more
Kader was a student at a French university in Paris in 1961. Though we know little about him, it is possible that he was the French-born son of an Algerian immigrant who had moved to France after having served for the French army in one of the world wars. Kader’s life was not easy: he … Read more
“The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man …” Thus begins Article XI of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The document signifies a landmark in the history of human rights, no doubt. But it contains an unavoidably moral approach to … Read more
The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon … Read more