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The Short American CenturyA PostmortemEdited by Andrew BacevichHarvard University Press, $25.95, 296 pp.

Nick Baumann

This collection of essays constitutes a how-to manual for people who sense something deeply wrong with the current bipartisan consensus on American power, but can’t quite articulate what it is.

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  • Gimcrack Genresby Anthony DomesticoIn Rose Tremain’s historical novel Restoration, two characters discuss the importance of background to a painting’s overall effect. Even in a portrait, where the viewer’s attention is drawn pri...
  • Moths and Eyesby Edward T. WheelerI have been rereading Anna Karenina ( the Constance Garnett translation) and had to stop over a chapter that connected a recourse of novelists and theories of mind. The scene is one in which Anna’s husband, Alexey Alexandrovitch, visits a lawyer (unnamed) to ...
  • Arguing about breastfeeding, Mother’s Day editionby Mollie Wilson O'ReillyI have a letter published in the June 2012 Harper’s, regarding the Elisabeth Badinter article I blogged about here a while back. I sent 700 words and they published 70. Chopping up letters is an edit...
  • At An Endby Edward T. WheelerHenning Mankell, the Swedish mystery writer, appears to have brought his dark, gifted and melancholic hero, Kurt Wallender, to a tired end. One wonders if the burden of success – and the Wallender series has been very successful – increased the desperation with whic...
  • 'Il sogno di Scipione'by Frank OveisWritten by the sixteen-year-old Mozart with a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, "Il sogno di Scipione" was performed by the Gotham Chamber Opera at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay Colle...
  • Thoughts on the last day of schoolby Scott D. MoringielloHigher education is much in the news these days. The New Yorker has an article about Stanford’s relationship with Silicon Valley. Frank Bruni
  • The Fear Factorby Edward T. WheelerRobert Harris (author of Pompeii, The Ghost Writer, the Cicero trilogy, and others) has publis...
  • Re-Readingby Edward T. WheelerForty years ago, I sat, afternoon after afternoon, for almost two years, in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library. I was purportedly pursuing literary research (I had done the serious work before lunch, honestly!), but really I was reading novels that were loos...
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