Month: October 2002

When our associate editor’s sister writes a book, we can’t help but think you should buy it. Especially if that book was the successful and superhip result of a Ph.D. dissertation on the unlikely subject of contemporary television programming and viewing. In Viewers Like You?, Laurie Ouellette finally explains why, despite knowing better, we vegged…

Many people don’t understand that “May you live in interesting times” is a curse. It is certainly one that befell Cicero, who was indeed Rome’s greatest politician, in the sense both of statesman and opportunist. Marcus Tullius Cicero was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, and Augustus, the figures that did most to…

Since the odds of you being attacked by a shark are about the same as being marooned on a desert island with Jennifer Lopez or Russell Crowe, New York Times writer John Tierney has written The Best Case Scenario Handbook, a parody of those successful worst-case handbooks. If you are going to learn how to…

If anyone has earned the right to use such an inclusive title for a series of records as “American Recordings,” it’s Johnny Cash. He connects with an amazingly broad set of audiences, from collegiate hipsters to presidents Nixon and Reagan, and is equally able to impress pious churchgoers and (as Merle Haggard once observed) “to…

You know, there just aren’t very many pop recording artists these days who are making what we’d call “art” in the high-brow sense of the word. And any time we start making a list (you know how we love lists around here!), the little elfish one from Iceland lands right on top, every time. Her…

In recent years, there’s been a real expansion in our awareness of great rock ’n’ roll coming from non-English speaking countries—and we’re not just talking about all the cool ABBA tribute bands. Maybe it’s just the natural consequence of having successfully overwhelmed the rest of the world with our brand of pop music. Are we…