Tag: best seller
Donald Trump’s Gift to Adam Schiff
Representative Adam Schiff was mingling his way through a friendly crowd at a Democratic barbecue when the hecklers arrived—by boat. Schiff and two other Senate candidates, Representatives Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, convened on the back patio of a country club overlooking the port of Stockton, California. Schiff spoke first. “It’s such a beautiful evening,” he said, thanking the host, local Democratic Representative Josh Harder.
It was hard to know what to make of the protest vessel, except that
The ‘Whiteboy Brooklyn Novelist’ Grows Up
Jonathan Lethem had come back to Brooklyn, and I wanted to know why.
One afternoon a few months ago, he took me to Dean Street, the block in Boerum Hill where he grew up in the ’70s. The area is the setting of his 2003 book (and one of my favorite novels), The Fortress of Solitude, and of his new one, Brooklyn Crime Novel.
I was raised in Brooklyn too, some 15 years after Lethem, and he
A Novel Approach to Diagnosing Trump
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In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association established the so-called Goldwater Rule as a response to the many mental-health professionals who had ventured glib and florid diagnoses of Senator Barry Goldwater during his 1964 presidential campaign. “I believe Goldwater has the same pathological makeup as Hitler, Castro, Stalin, and
Modern Spirituality Is a Consumer’s Choice Now
The decline of organized religion has privatized people’s search for meaning.
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Question of the Week
What is your relationship with organized religion? How has it affected your life,
What Did Medieval Peasants Know?
In the foreword to her book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, the historian Barbara W. Tuchman offered a warning to people with simplistic ideas about what life was like in the medieval world, and what that might say about humanity as a whole: You think you know, but you have no idea.
The period, which spans roughly 500 to 1500, presents some problems for people trying to craft uncomplicated stories. “No age is tidy or made of whole
The Controversial Marriage Book That’s Dividing Orthodox Jewish Women
The book, with its kitschy cover illustration of a red rose, has made the rounds for years. By the time I became a bride in 2015, it was status quo, passed around alongside the traditional recommended readings on ritual purity and Jewish marriage. The Surrendered Wife is a title frequently invoked among Orthodox Jewish women, quoted during mom walks with strollers and discussed in WhatsApp groups. Premarital teachers recommend the text to young brides-to-be. Rabbis and their wives preach from
I Gave Myself Three Months to Change My Personality
One morning last summer, I woke up and announced, to no one in particular: “I choose to be happy today!” Next I journaled about the things I was grateful for and tried to think more positively about my enemies and myself. When someone later criticized me on Twitter, I suppressed my rage and tried to sympathize with my hater. Then, to loosen up and expand my social skills, I headed to an improv class.
What Journalist Rana Ayyub Revealed About Indian Democracy
When Joe Biden convened his virtual Summit for Democracy today, Narendra Modi was among the attendees. The Indian prime minister is the steward of the world’s largest democracy. Any conversation about global democratic decline, and what can be done to reverse it, would be incomplete without his participation.
Modi’s involvement in the summit nevertheless looks odd—even awkward—considering the role that he has played in precipitating democratic decline. Since coming to power in 2014, Modi has overseen a steady transformation of