Articles in Books

The Virtue In Vice

Is abstinence as deadly a sin as excess?

The Bad Future

Climate change vs. civilization

The Paradox of Paradise

Adventures in Waynejohnstonland

Graphic Truths

Once pure fantasy, the comic book has become a powerful way of portraying reality

The Possibility of a Pornographic Moralist

Caustic, excessive, self-loathing French author Michel Houellebecq skewers Western civilization

Walking off the Map

Hymns to the unknown city beneath our feet

Dispatches from the Void

Three journalists watch the gears of history work in real time

It’s a Porn World After All

Commercial concupiscence consumes global culture

Rising China, Razing Mao

A searing portrait of the Great Helmsman

Ideological Warfare

Why the United States needs opinionated loudmouths

Who Killed Globalization?

Was it Colonel Bush in the kitchen with a gun? Mr. Nike in the Gym with a blunt instrument? Sir Ralston Saul in his study with a sharp pencil?

Dangerous Liaisons

How Hollywood seduced the world, then ate it.

Identity Crisis

Turkey’s most famous writer evokes his country’s schizophrenic past and its struggle with Islam’s place in day-to-day life.

A Civilizing Influence

Tariq Ali’s Islam Quintet paints a softer face on the historical interactions between Muslims and the West

Has Childhood Gone awol?

Both picture books and young readers seem to be disappearing as a new target market takes shape

The Life Quixotic

Cervantes’ man of la Mancha rides again

Cities in a Raw Young Century

Bombay, Tehran, and Prague, in all their madness and excess, refuse to conform to Western notions of the modern city

The Bonfire is Out

Hockey: The Great Literary Shutout

Hockey literature takes a bodycheck

Burning Man