You can’t open a book about coffee, no matter what tone it takes, without reading a global story. Whatever else the current crisis may be teaching us, the one certain thing is that self-sufficiency is[…]
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“When you’re a member of the very society you’re reporting on, every word is laden with responsibility. Personal and professional are always mixed”
In my eight years as an Orthodox journalist writing mainly about Orthodox life for non-Orthodox publications, I have lived this every day. When you’re a member of the very society you’re reporting on, every word[…]
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“The only observation that feels true is that ‘Tiger King’ is what we watched two weeks into our isolation”
“Tiger King” is prestige trash: narratively ambitious but self-aware. True crime is far from journalism. (Exotic’s history was more thoroughly investigated in a New York magazine story by Robert Moor.) In the series’ final episode,[…]
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Chailkin and Goode are less interested in getting to the truth of the matter than in revelling in their subjects’ chintzy vanity projects: Baskin’s YouTube channel (“Hey, all you cool cats and kittens”), Doc Antle’s[…]
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Tiger King’s “choice of inspirational comparison – a mockumentary – is telling”
As Goode recently told Rolling Stone, “What fascinated Rebecca and I was the ‘Best in Show’ aspect, where the people are almost more interesting than the exotic animals they’re keeping.” Goode’s choice of inspirational comparison—a[…]
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“The plague novel is the place where all human beings abandon all other human beings”
The structure of the modern plague novel, all the way to Stephen King’s “The Stand” and beyond, is a series of variations on “A Journal of the Plague Year” (a story set within the walls[…]
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“the existence of books, no matter how grim the tale, is itself a sign, evidence that humanity endures, in the very contagion of reading”
In the long centuries during which the plague ravaged Europe, the quarantined, if they were lucky enough to have books, read them. If not, and if they were well enough, they told stories. In Giovanni[…]
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“the Talmud only makes sense to the reader who has already read it; a first reading of the Talmud only happens during its second reading”
The Talmud is not a book to be read, but a book to do things with – not a book to think about but a book to think with; and beginning to read the Talmud[…]
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“the economy and the structure of work are not the way they used to be. This has had devastating effects on the family and on community life”
For the first few decades after the Second World War, per-capita U.S. economic growth averaged between two and three per cent a year. In the nineties, however, it dipped below two per cent. In the[…]
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“We Americans are reluctant to acknowledge that our economy serves the educated classes and penalizes the rest”
When it comes to people whose lives aren’t going well, American culture is a harsh judge: if you can’t find enough work, if your wages are too low, if you can’t be counted on to[…]
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