Author Archive
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Critical Eye
When McGovern met Mailer
October 26, 2012 06:50 AMWhen former U.S. Senator George McGovern died in late October, he was valorized as the rare decent man working in a business of crooks, liars, and frauds. But this wasn’t just the usual whitewashing process that accompanies eulogies... Continue reading
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Critical Eye
How the US captured the real 9/11 mastermind
June 29, 2012 06:50 AMThe Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed | By Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer | Little, Brown and Company | 368 pages, $27.99 Terry McDermott’s Perfect Soldiers, released in 2005,... Continue reading
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Critical Eye
America’s forgotten war
June 27, 2012 06:50 AMThe Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812 | By Troy Bickham | Oxford University Press | 325 pages, $34.95 If any large-scale war in American history has been forgotten, it is the... Continue reading
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Critical Eye
What it takes to win the White House
May 14, 2012 03:00 PMThe Candidate: What It Takes to Win—And Hold—The White House | By Samuel L. Popkin | Oxford University Press | 350 pages, $27.95 Academic political science and Washington policymaking once had a close relationship: during the Franklin Roosevelt and... Continue reading
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Critical Eye
Revisiting Henry Luce’s “American Century”
February 29, 2012 01:46 PMThe Short American Century: A Postmortem | Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich | Harvard University Press | 296 pages, $25.95 In 1904, Canadian prime minister Wilfred Wilfrid Laurier declared that “The 20th Century Will Be the Century of Canada.”* In... Continue reading
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Critical Eye
The Literary Roots of the Gay Revolution
February 2, 2012 03:48 PMEminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America | By Christopher Bram | Twelve Books | 371 pages, $27.99 In April of 2011, the pollster Nate Silver of The New York Times observed that four polls in eight... Continue reading
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Critical Eye
Tracing the Roots of Modern Conservatism
September 14, 2011 12:09 PMThe Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party | By Michael Bowen | University of North Carolina Press | 272 pp, $45.00. The origins of the modern conservative movement are ostensibly... Continue reading
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Critical Eye
Searching for D.B. Cooper
August 10, 2011 02:22 PMSkyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper| By Geoffrey Gray | Crown | 302 pages, $25.00 In the winter of 1971, a man calling himself Dan (misreported as D.B.) Cooper used a bomb to hijack a 727 boarding from Portland, Oregon,... Continue reading
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Review
Critical Condition
February 25, 2010 03:33 PMChristopher Hayes is a European-style social democrat, who worked at the left-leaning In These Times before assuming his current job at the equally left-leaning Nation. Not too many decades ago, this exemplary progressive would likely have reviewed books for... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Contra Iran
November 4, 2009 09:22 AMThirty years ago today, Iranian students invaded the United States embassy in Tehran and captured seventy-one American diplomats, keeping fifty-three of them hostage for 444 days. The Iranian hostage crisis, as it came to be known, was a watershed moment... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Stenography Machines
August 25, 2009 08:00 AMIn a much-discussed Washington Post essay last week--“In America, Crazy is a Preexisting Condition”--the liberal historian Rick Perlstein argued that the mobs disrupting town hall meetings around the country are heirs to a long, if not proud, tradition... Continue reading
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Audit Notes: pyramid people, Disney and ABC, no USA Today paywall Roddy Boyd digs into a diet-shake pyramid scheme
- Hot air Rises Above on CNBC An anchor pins a minor dip in stocks on the TV appearance of a minor politician
The Observatory Science
- Dull news from Doha UN climate summit a ho-hum affair for the press
- Highway to the danger zone Following Sandy, HuffPo and NYT dig into the folly of coastal development
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- NBC News sets good example for Medicare reporting People perspective leads to clear explanation of impact of proposed changes
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The Kicker last updated: Fri 3:00 PM
- Must-reads of the week
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- Tom Rosenstiel leaving Pew
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