Posts Tagged ‘books’

James Baldwin at David Zwirner

I worked with Hilton Als on a James Baldwin show; now Als has curated an exhibit about him

The continuing glory of the New York Review of Books

The New York Review was always great, but it may be even better under new editor Ian Buruma

Robert Silvers was our greatest editor

Robert Silvers died this week but his New York Review of Books brought me years of pleasure


New York City Illustrated, 1910

A century on, a tourist souvenir reveals the architectural wonders of a city long lost

The amazing marginalia of In Search of Fatima

A reader hostile to everything lets her feelings be known

Hilton Als on Amiri Baraka and James Baldwin

Hilton Als met Amiri Baraka only once: at the James Baldwin tribute I directed at Lincoln Center


Zadie Smith on libraries and the state of the state

How did something as fine and useful as a public library become an ideological issue?

One year on in Egypt: Art, Politics and Power

The Egyptian revolution happened in the middle of my Egypt novel and I didn’t know what to do about it

Transition: An International Review

Transition began in Uganda in 1961; by the late-1990s it was perhaps the finest magazine on earth


Hitch 1949-2011

Christopher Hitchens wrote like a polymath on a bender and his bombast was a pure reading pleasure

Hypnotism for Everybody by Pandit Lakshmi Doss, Chennai, India, 2004

It reflects a particularly Indian fondness for mystical possibility paired with a gift for gab

A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne

The best book about the 9/11 attacks and war in Iraq, though it is about France in 1950s Algeria


Arab arts and political radicals in London this weekend

And there are cool Arab arts of all sorts in London this summer

Samandal comic book, debut issue, 2008, Beirut, Lebanon

An eclectic mix of graphic styles and languages that captures the cultural mixed-up-ness of Beirut

Patti Smith sends me to the Chelsea Hotel

The Chelsea, she writes, was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone. Indeed.


Daunt Books tote bag, Marylebone, London

The bag that created a security risk in Beirut, Lebanon

Diabolik fumetto ‘Il Morto che Ritorna’, Italy, 1995

Italian comic books await a Quentin Tarantino to make them cool again

French diary from WWII

The cramped hand suggests a shortage of paper, the mysterious letters and numbers hint at a code


Remembering Studs Terkel

It would have been the great oral historian’s 99th birthday today

Talking with Lila Azam Zanganeh about Nabokov and happiness

Finding a kindred spirit on the rich cultural heritage lost to exile

Little Red Book by Mao Tse-tung, second edition, 1967

The rare second edition of Mao’s famous book, with a foreword by Lin Biao before he fell from grace


Blue Guide to Yugoslavia: Paris, France, 1970

A travel guide to Yugoslavia, before war tore it apart