Burning Man
Books discussed in this essay An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World by Pankaj Mishra Farrar, Strauss & Giroux 320 pp., $36 Buddha by Karen Armstrong Penguin 205 …
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A Manual’s Labours
The self-help sex book, like its first readers, has crossed middle age. With Viagra, both get a little lift
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The Photographer and the Philosopher
The traveller, I decided one day, is part photographer and part philosopher: his aim, as he sets out, is to catch some aspect of his subject – a tilt of …
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Spin Alert
Is an increasingly powerful public relations industry controlling the news?
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The Art of the Bad Review
We need more book critics who are fearless—though that alone won’t do
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The Bookbinder
Unlike the bowyer or the cooper, the bookbinder still performs a necessary function
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Gained in Translation
Most novelists who are fortunate enough to have had their novels translated into other languages are also fortunate that they are unable to read those languages. I have a closet …
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The Ends of History
Histories of the entire universe, and of its minuscule parts—potatoes, coal, corsets—have captured our imagination. But what do they tell us about our past?
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The New World, Anew
Colin McAdams’s tale bring Can Lit out of the dark
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What Franklin Meant
Two conservatives reconsider the president who saved capitalism – and created the American welfare state
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