Adam Keiper reviews Jonah Goldberg’s Suicide of the West: It is “a big, baggy, sometimes brilliant case for gratitude and perpetuation.”
The stories libraries tell: Sarah Laskow reviews three books on the motive for collecting books.
Want to signal that you are a hip, progressive parent? Stupidly refer to your baby as a “theyby.”
Is Michael Mayer’s adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull the first great film based on the play?
“In Italy, there was the pope, and then there was Enzo”: The genius, determination, and charm of Enzo Ferrari.
There are now more people living in cities than outside them. This is the most important change in society in over a century argues Michael Goebel. “At some unknown moment between 2010 and 2015, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population lived in cities. Urbanization is unlikely to reverse. Every week since, another 3 million country dwellers have become urbanites. Rarely in history has a small number of metropolises bundled as much economic, political and cultural power over such vast swathes of hinterlands.”
Essay of the Day:
In The Atlantic, Rich Cohen tells the story of a Connecticut mobster who bought his 17-year-old son a minor-league hockey team and how the gesture helped land him in prison:
“Depending on whom you ask, Jimmy Galante was either one of its mobsters or a legit businessman whose waste-removal company had become associated with the Mafia. The New York Times described him as ‘a Danbury trash hauler suspected of mob ties’ who had a story ‘right out of The Sopranos.’
“Yet in some ways Galante’s biography seemed unlike that of a traditional hood. He was born in the Bronx but grew up in bucolic South Salem, New York; did a stint in the Air Force; and then took a job driving a garbage truck. In the mid-to-late 1970s, he started his own company, Automated Waste Disposal, and by 2004, he’d built it into a trash-collection empire of companies valued at about $100 million. Though he lived with his wife and two children in suburban New Fairfield, he was beloved in nearby Danbury, where he had his office. Galante was a philanthropist; a pediatric suite in the emergency department of Danbury Hospital was named for his family.
“However, he’d been to prison for tax evasion. And, according to court papers filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office, his business disputes occasionally ended in violence… But Jimmy Galante was smart, and the G-men could never quite nail him. He did have a weakness, though. Now and then, he liked to make an elaborate gesture, something attention-getting. In 2004, this meant buying a minor-league-hockey franchise and installing it at the local youth rink, the Danbury Ice Arena. Some say he did it as a civic benefactor, to give a depressed city something to rally around. (‘I wanted to bring something back to the community,’ Galante told me when I spoke with him in February.) Some say he did it for the same reason he owned a race-car squad: He loved to compete.
“Everyone, however, agrees that he did it at least in part for his son, AJ, who was 17. A senior at New Fairfield High, AJ had been an alternate captain of his school’s hockey team, which played at the Danbury Ice Arena with Jimmy often in attendance. Then AJ had gotten hurt. ‘He was a defenseman and hit a kid,’ Galante said. ‘It was a clean shot …[but] they came right at AJ, and he had a very severe knee injury, couldn’t play hockey anymore. Like any father, you want to be able to do something for your son.’
“As AJ explained it to me: ‘It happened at dinner. My father said, out of nowhere, “If I ever buy a hockey team, you’re going to run it.” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” Then, two days later, he said, “Okay, I bought the team.” True to his word, Galante made his son the team’s general manager. AJ did one of his first press calls on a cellphone in a New Fairfield High School hallway, the interview ending abruptly when a teacher walked by.”
Photo: Hallstatt
Poem: Jess Smith, “Lady Smith”
Get Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here.
