One of my friends--Garnette Cadogan--has been communicating with me about the post about book reviews and reminded me of Daniel Mendelsohn.  (If you haven't read Cadogan yet, start with his terrific...

Here's a piece about scholarly book reviewing.  The author makes a number of good points about the importance of the practice, in defense of it against the many critics who suggest it's largely a...

Is "basketed" even a legit verb?

A useful reminder about how charts can be visually presented badly, very badly.  Sometimes it's incompetence, sometimes maleficence.

A nice small...

This is a really interesting and educational piece on the phrase "professional-managerial class".  If the narrative here is right, it emerged out of a disillusionment at the failure of the New Left...

There are many ways in which the world we inhabit is different than the world we think we inhabit.  I assume that most people, at best, think of the world as the unchanging "background" to the...

I haven't looked very hard, but James Wood's piece in The New Yorker on Harold Bloom (after his death of several days ago) helpfully brings out the Freudian and, somewhat weirdly chest-beating...

The Pew Research Center is out with an "Update on America's Changing Religious Landscape," and they have some truly amazing numbers. There's a lot here, I pick three points at random:

First-...

It's raining in Charlottesville!  After (? in the midst of?) a long drought, that is a good thing.  But it's also a good reason to post a link to one of the most poignant of songs by The Carpenters...

I receive an on-line magazine, Academe, that is put out by the "American Association of University Professors."  It often has good little pieces in it; if you're interested in higher ed, you should...

Try not to think of me in a cute little hooded red cape now.  Just try it.

A somewhat opaque interview with Rita Felski, author of, among other books, The Limits of Critique.  She's not...