Author Archive

Articles by Daniel Luzer | Email the Author

 

1. Critical Eye

   Edward Luce charts America’s decline

   June 28, 2012 06:50 AM

   Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent | By Edward Luce | Atlantic Monthly Press | 291 pages, $26.00 Is America in decline? Almost since America established its hegemony over the rest of the world in the... Continue reading

2. Critical Eye

   Trashed

   June 4, 2012 06:50 AM

   Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash | By Edward Humes | Avery | 288 pages, $27.00 Humans have always produced garbage. Archeologists use trash debris to help them understand past civilizations. The rubbish people leave behind is often much... Continue reading

3. The Kicker

   Class, warfare

   May 31, 2012 03:44 PM

   Paul Fussell, historian and cultural critic, died last week at 88. With his death, America lost a steady voice for cantankerous protest against all so many pedestrian national institutions and assumptions—the gourmet restaurant, the uniform, the armed forces. Unusually for... Continue reading

4. Critical Eye

   Taking Tea with Ayn Rand

   March 29, 2012 11:52 AM

   Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul | By Gary Weiss | St Martin’s Press | 304 pages, $24.99 Ayn Rand, the GOP’s crotchety, misanthropic little immigrant grandmother, is hot again. Her books are selling well; her works... Continue reading

5. Critical Eye

   Babel

   March 31, 2011 01:09 PM

   You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity | by Robert Lane Greene | Random House | 336 pages, $25.00 There’s a certain outspoken portion of the English-speaking population that’s really, really into grammar.... Continue reading

6. Critical Eye

   Pretty Pictures, Hard Times

   February 10, 2011 12:10 PM

   Art for the Middle Classes: America's Illustrated Magazines of the 1840s by Cynthia Lee Patterson | University Press of Mississippi | 210 pages, $50 Ah, modern journalism. Contributors struggle to find jobs and receive timely payments; publishers wonder where they’ll... Continue reading

7. The News Frontier

   The Power of the Drones

   November 23, 2010 11:46 AM

   People have to be damn committed to an idea to attend an event about it on a Monday night, even one with free drinks. The last thing people want to do at 6 p.m. in the beginning of the week... Continue reading

8. The Kicker

   Stung Out

   May 25, 2010 04:24 PM

   Apparently now that the is-she-actually-a-lesbian discussion has been ruled dilatory, journalists have decided to focus on the one kinda minority thing Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s got going for her: she’s Jewish! Or, as Evan Thomas at Newsweek... Continue reading

9. Behind the News

   Dominick Dunne, Done

   September 3, 2009 07:00 AM

   Quite possibly the person most bothered by the death of Edward M. Kennedy last week was celebrity crime writer and literary glad-hand Dominick Dunne, who had the regrettable luck to die the same day ... Continue reading

10. The Kicker

    We Heart the Vineyard

    August 14, 2009 05:51 PM

    So apparently Barack Obama is going to spend a week at the end of this month in Martha's Vineyard. This choice isn’t much of a shock; the island south of Cape Cod has long been a popular vacation... Continue reading

11. The Kicker

    Depression Shopping

    August 3, 2009 12:25 PM

    As surely everyone knows by now, America is deep in the throes of a recession. But no matter how dire the economy, people still buy stuff. Well apparently they buy a lot,... Continue reading

12. Behind the News

    The Magazinist

    July 23, 2009 10:44 AM

    Every now and then, CJR’s Magazinist delivers an opinionated look at the journals of opinion. Discovering Japan The cover story in the July 2009 issue of Reason, "Turning Japanese", examines how the current economic crisis is dangerously... Continue reading

13. Behind the News

    The Magazinist

    May 6, 2009 11:58 AM

    Every now and then, CJR’s Magazinist delivers an opinionated look at the journals of opinion. The main cover line of the May issue of The American Prospect—"The future of RISK: Markets can't protect us. What will?"—practically screams at... Continue reading

14. The Observatory

    Wish He Was a Baller

    April 16, 2009 08:39 AM

    As virtually all of America knows by now, Tom Friedman is a big environmentalist. He loves nature, green things, responsible business practices, stuff Europe does, and so on. That's how America knows the New York Times columnist is... Continue reading

15. Campaign Desk

    Class Dismissed

    April 9, 2009 10:20 AM

    Historian John Steele Gordon, writing on Barack Obama’s economic policies in the April issue of Commentary, says that the president's plan to raise taxes on high earners and increase regulations on business will curtail job creation... Continue reading

16. Campaign Desk

    Mission Accomplished?

    March 26, 2009 04:04 PM

    Perhaps because it is inherently a little dull, the world of education policy likes to liven up its policy disputes by calling them "wars." There are reading wars, technology wars, wars about Teach for America, and... Continue reading

17. Campaign Desk

    Baby Elephants

    March 12, 2009 03:49 PM

    On February 27, 2009, attendees at the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference were addressed by Jonathan Krohn, a precocious fourteen-year-old who helpfully informed his audience that the Republican Party is merely the "shell" to conservatism's... Continue reading

18. Campaign Desk

    Defining “Middle Class”

    February 5, 2009 02:05 PM

    In the midst of the debates leading up to the recent presidential election, the governor of Alaska said something to the effect that she understands middle class values and struggles because of her experience “in the... Continue reading

19. The Kicker

    Colorblind at The New York Times

    January 21, 2009 01:58 PM

    In today's New York Times, Deborah Needleman has an interesting, if sort of fluffy, column about how the Obamas should redecorate the White House. It's called "Free the Blue Room." But the accompanying picture? Um,... Continue reading

20. Campaign Desk

    The Harry Reid Show

    January 9, 2009 11:51 AM

    As of this writing, it looks like Roland Burris, appointed to the Senate last week by embattled Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, will eventually be allowed to take his seat. There was never much doubt about this outcome—but you wouldn’t know... Continue reading

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