Category Archives: Books

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

A Review of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King

Posted on 16 April 2011 by

[San Francisco Chronicle] In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, I’ve got a review of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. This novel isn’t exactly hurting for attention, but I do try to make a couple of fresh points: first, that Wallace has … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | 1 Comment

Writing the Civil War

Posted on 8 April 2011 by

[Boston Globe] In this week’s Boston Globe — and exactly 150 years after the start of the Civil War — I’ve got a feature on the war’s impact on American literature. For pretty much all of those 150 years, people … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Features | 1 Comment