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Much has been written about Matthew Weiner’s meticulous rendering of the '60s in his mega-hit, Mad Men. A lot has been said about set design and historical references, replete with memorabilia, but the real strength of Mad Men has always rested in its vivid character depictions, solid storytelling and...

Westbrook Pegler From Humanities: A cartoon from the 1940s pictures a formal dance party torn about by tuxedoed men yelling at each other, with a woman sitting in the center of the image saying, “All I did was mention Pegler!” She was referring to Westbrook Pegler, a syndicated newspaper...

Council Estate, Paul Cummings, 2009 by Jeffrey Stevenson Murer In ganging up on housing estates, in racist attacks or inter-state brinkmanship, how does the enemy become the Other? This peculiar purification process requires a narrative and a chance to ‘perform a boundary’. For local and national communities, leaders and...

Advertisement for Olivetti Typewriters, illustrated by Ernesto Pirovano From The Chronicle of Higher Education: Is the time spent reviewing other people’s books more important than writing your own stuff, making your own contributions? One of my graduate-student friends has published a number of book reviews, the assignments often passed...

The question of whether or not it is ethical to eat meat would seem to hinge upon the question of whether or not animals are able to feel pain. If it is the case that animals are incapable of feeling pain, then concerns about their inhumane treatment in abattoirs...

Young Couple, Emil Nolde From Colombia Journalism Review: John and Naomi are just one of a number of couples who have updated the traditional family-run news business by taking it online. Couples have left their newsroom jobs behind, pooled their skills, and struck out on their own. With their...

Left: Jo Champa, Chelsea Hotel, NYC, Helmut Newton, 1988. Right: Sasha Grey by Cain Todd Locating the murky distinction between pornography and erotic art has long exercised minds in many domains, philosophy amongst them. One of the chief ways in which philosophers have sought to draw the distinction is...

Whitechapel, London, 1972. Photograph by Ian Berry. by Ali Rattansi While analysing multiculturalism in the UK, the Netherlands and France in my recent Multiculturalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011), I had to confess that I had little idea what David Cameron’s “big society” project was going...

From Slacker, Orion Pictures, 1991 From N+1: New York City is the great circling bathtub drain that young people from the college towns and mid-sized cities of North America disappear into, unable to resist the siren song of their own cosmopolitan ambitions. The drainage of souls from second- and...

The “Red Room” at Brooke House Sixth Form College in Hackney, London by Melissa Benn Faster than we recognise, schools are becoming profit centres. The buildings, the teaching, the cleaning, the exam results are all ways to make money. But who benefits? Brooke House Sixth Form College in Hackney – ...

by Bill Benzon It is a truth universally acknowledged that What’s Opera, Doc? is one of the finest cartoons ever made. It satirizes opera, Wagner in particular; it parodies Disney’s Fantasia, and, for that matter, it parodies the routines of its stars, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. The production...

“SWITZERLAND EXPOSED,” screamed the title of a book I happened to see recently, drawing a wry smile, and a feeling of “you can’t be serious!” That’s the usual response when people hear about my new research on American philanthropic foundations, which argues that they are not so “cuddly” a...

I was trying to recall Ezra Pound’s line, “And men went down to the sea in ships.” Fine, wonderful line, except that’s not what he said. What Pound said, opening “Canto I,” I now recalled, looking it up, was, “And then went down to the ship.” And I was...

Tyron Garner and John Geddes Lawrence From The New Yorker: In 2003, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Lawrence v. Texas, ruling, by a six-to-three margin, that anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional. Even those of us who followed the case had a rather gauzy notion of what...

Tom and Jerry’s Bar, New York City, 1890s From Barnes and Noble Review: In the 1890s, New York “reigned as the vice capital of the United States, dangling more opportunities for prostitution, gambling, and all-night drinking” than any other American city, explains Zacks, author of History Laid Bare and...

Photograph by Tom Flynn by Eli S. Evans I was on my way home to Milwaukee for the weekend, somewhere in that brief stretch of no man’s land that separates the casino town of Dubuque, Iowa from the Wisconsin state line, when 2011 National League MVP Ryan Braun, whose...

The Simpsons, 20th Century Fox From Triple Canopy: Before Facebook and Twitter became avenues for advertising ourselves and our careers, before Internet dating became not only acceptable but preferable to the alternatives, before so much of our social and professional lives came to be conducted on the Web, social...

Peoples Library, Zuccotti Park. Photograph by David Shankbone by Barbara Fister In 2011, American libraries fought for the right to do what they had done in the past: share books and information. Over the past ten years, scholarship has been massively privatized; library access to journals is now almost...