John Moncure Daniel was ever quick to attack what he saw as wrong. He minced no words during the seven years he spent as a top American diplomat, including a moment which may have deeply affected the history of Italy. Subsequently, Daniel...
The first reaction of the educated public to a new volume of political memoirs is one of wariness. Will this be another pièce justicatif — or an example of Establishment iconography aimed at glorifying distinguished pomposity—or both...
Caroline Rody’s revisionary literary criticism offers new and persuasive ways to understand the “renaissance” of African-American women writers and of Caribbean women writers during the past three decades. What has allowed U.S. writers Toni...
Norcross, 37, is not hardhearted. It’s only that if you operate a drawbridge on a navigable waterway in the United States, the First Commandment is unambiguous: thou shalt open the bridge when the ship gets there. You don’t ask the ship to...
Merrill Peterson’s subject in this detailed and masterly study is the “intermediate” generation that followed the founders of the republic. Their ascendancy extended from the era of the War of 1812 to the eve of the civil war they labored...
This collection of never-before-published documents from the former Soviet Union reveals the startling fact that—contrary to long-standing belief—the Soviet Union did not support the Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936—1939)...
It frequently happens that an artist who has had enormous prestige during his lifetime suffers a temporary decline in his reputation after his death. T. S. Eliot is the perfect example.
The past quarter century has witnessed a major shift in the structures of American politics, often characterized as the passing of “the New Deal order.” G. Edward White’s superb new book The Constitution and the New Deal is a monument to...
Grant Webster provides a detailed account of the New Critics and the New York Intellectuals; and he supplements these central sections of his book by analyzing the nature of critical schools and by supplying an excellent bibliography and...
