Category Archives: Books

“I was always slightly less Foucauldian than I sounded”: A profile of Stephen Greenblatt

Posted on 2 October 2011 by

[The Boston Globe] In Sunday’s Boston Globe, in the Ideas section, I’ve got a profile of Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt. In his new book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Greenblatt writes about the fifteenth century’s rediscovery of Lucretius and … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Features | Leave a comment

Christmas is only three months away!

Posted on 16 September 2011 by

For their December 1990 issue, the editors of The American Spectator did the same thing they’d done every year since 1976: they asked a few famous writers, academics, and political types to provide book recommendations for the holiday shopping season. … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Dissertation ephemera, Politics | Leave a comment

Notes on the Johnstown Flood National Memorial (and on David McCullough)

Posted on 29 August 2011 by

[The New Republic] The New Republic‘s just put out a special 9/11 issue, and I’ve got a feature in it on the long struggle to build the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I don’t have a lot more to … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Features | Leave a comment

Taylor Swift, Auto-Didact

Posted on 8 August 2011 by

In this week’s Rolling Stone, Taylor Swift talks history. “I just read a 900-page book called The Kennedy Women,” she tells the magazine. “This morning I bought books about John Adams, Lincoln’s Cabinet, the Founding Fathers and Ellis Island.” Let’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Music | 1 Comment

Presidents and Their Limited Editions

Posted on 27 May 2011 by

[Boston Globe] I’m a little late in linking to this, but I wrote another story for the Boston Globe‘s Ideas section — this one on the crazy, opulent history of deluxe presidential memoirs, books that typically come with autographs, artificially … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Dissertation ephemera, Politics | 1 Comment