Culture
He Was a Genius for the Ages. Can We Give Him a Break?
Gottfried Leibniz was not the first philosopher to think that we live in the best of all possible worlds. He may have been the unluckiest,…
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Culture
Every Mandala Tells a Secret
There was more flaying than I expected, though not necessarily more than I wanted, at “Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet.” Any…
Business
Is There Any Escape from the Spotify Syndrome?
Like countless other people around the globe, I stream music, and like more than six hundred million of them I mainly use Spotify.…
Culture
Audra McDonald Triumphs in “Gypsy” on Broadway
In the nineteen-thirties, Gypsy Rose Lee, perhaps the world’s most famous stripper, helped transform burlesque from a vulgar pastime to…
Culture
Family Discord and Holiday Music in “Cult of Love” and “No President”
The first image of Leslye Headland’s family drama,“Cult of Love,” on Broadway at the Hayes, looks like a Christmas card. Behind a gauzy…
News
Paul Valéry Would Prefer Not To
One way of being a modernist writer is to pay attention to the most saliently modern objects and experiences. So it is that Proust…
Culture
The Surprisingly Sunny Origins of the Frankfurt School
One of the more reliable chemical reactions in European culture occurs when particles of German mental matter enter Italy. Suddenly,…
Culture
The Art Dealer Who Wanted to Be Art
If you remember anything about this painting, may it be that the dog’s name is Noble. The black poodle in the bottom left greets us as a…
Culture
The Frenemies Who Fought to Bring Birth Control to the U.S.
Judging by how commonly birth control is practiced in the United States, it ought to rank among the least controversial of subjects. In…
News
What’s the Difference Between a Rampaging Mob and a Righteous Protest?
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular…
Culture
“Say Nothing” Is a Gripping Drama of Political Disillusionment
In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.…
Culture
A Début Novel Captures the Start of India’s Modi Era
E pluribus unum might be the proper political aspiration for a large and multifarious country, but when it comes to the novel people tend…
Culture
Is the Twentieth-Century Novel a Genre?
Genres are the Sirens of literary criticism. They seem friendly and alluring, but they are dangerously elusive shape-shifters. You really…
Culture
The Brothers Grimm Were Dark for a Reason
Once upon a time, a family by the name of Grimm carried on a life that was anything but. In the wooded German state of Hessen, Philipp, a…