Reviews and News:
“When Adolf Hitler turned 30, in 1919, his life was more than half over, yet he had made not the slightest mark on the world. He had no close friends and was probably still a virgin. As a young man, he had dreamed of being a painter or an architect, but he was rejected twice from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. He had never held a job; during his years in the Austrian capital before World War I, he survived by peddling his paintings and postcards, and was sometimes homeless. When war broke out in 1914, he entered the German Army as a private, and when the war ended four years later, he was still a private. He was never promoted, the regimental adjutant explained, because he ‘lacked leadership qualities.’ Yet within a few years, large crowds of Nazi supporters would be hailing this anonymous failure as their Führer. At 43, Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, and by 52 he could claim to be the most powerful man in the history of Europe, with an empire that spanned the continent.” How did he do it?
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Revisiting the hot spots and homes of New York’s abstract expressionists: “Fernand Léger’s old studio now has squatters living on the doorstep. They’re an unusual sight in the new New York, especially around Bowery. These ones, at no. 222, are African and live in a huge cardboard box decorated with industrial plastic. As a pioneering modernist, Léger would have appreciated their geometry — and poverty. He’d have been less sure about the building opposite: the New Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s covered in silvery mesh, and looks like a giant speaker with a fishing boat dangling off the top. How, he might wonder, had art become so extravagant and obscure?”
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16th-century Europe’s powerful royal women: “Sarah Gristwood’s sweeping survey of the careers of numerous royal women in 16th-century Europe amply justifies the nod to Game of Thrones in the title: it features enough dynastic conflict, violence and sexual intrigue to satisfy the most hardened addicts of the series. Rather than make the link explicit, Gristwood maintains that the game she has in mind is chess, at which many of the book’s female protagonists excelled.”
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Restoring the homes of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe: “Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain lived on adjoining properties in Hartford, and they each agonized over decorating choices and related expenses. The two expansive brick homes, built in the early 1870s on a hillside near the leafy grounds of a mental hospital, were turned into museums decades ago, and the curators keep updating the décor in pursuit of greater historical accuracy. Rooms at both sites are being restored, and the artifacts going on view convey how Stowe and Twain created peaceful hide-outs for writing.”
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In Case You MIssed It:
Hugh Kenner’s contrarianism: “He can undo a library’s worth of dissertations by mentioning that people mistake ‘Kafka for a physician rather than a symptom.’ William Empson’s fascination with teasing out the ambiguities of individual words is ‘a little like discussing an automobile solely in terms of the weight borne by its ball-bearings.’ And whenever literature is discussed, there’s always those people who imagine that writing ‘reached an apex in Keats.'”
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Evelyn Waugh “possessed many vices and failings — snobbery, spite, cruelty, ire, sloth, arrogance, gluttony, boozery, and pigheadedness.” Two things he wasn’t: dull or cowardly.
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The learning style myth: “Teaching someone to memorize something according to their preferred learning style, for example, does not result in a significant improvement in their ability to recall that information later. Still, much to the annoyance of psychologists like Christian Jarrett — who included learning styles in his 2014 book Great Myths of the Brain (which Science of Us excerpted here) — this idea refuses to die. A new study, summarized by Jarrett on BPS Research Digest today, helps explain why: Even if learning styles are actually nonsense, it sure doesn’t feel that way.”
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Why Carthage failed and Rome succeeded.
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Classic Essay: Ellen Willis, “The Sound of Bob Dylan”
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Interview: John J. Miller talks with Paul A. Rahe about Sparta and statesmanship
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