Reviews and News:
Why does Al Capone still fascinate?
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Thoreau’s jokes: During Thoreau’s lifetime “his audience had learned to anticipate laughs whenever he appeared in print or rose to speak.” He was “reputed to be a humorist (it was by that term that Nathaniel Hawthorne described him in a letter to a friend), and on the lyceum circuit he tended to crack up the crowds. Following lectures in Salem and Gloucester in 1848, the reviews were unanimous. His Salem talk, as reported in the local Observer, was ‘done in an admirable manner, in a strain of exquisite humor…’ Gloucester’s Telegraph also lauded his humor, noting his facility for: “‘bringing down the house’ by his quaint remarks.’ In both places, he had lectured from what would become Walden‘s overture, ‘Economy,’ which today is popularly (and unjustly) considered a dry and over-long barrier to entry for new readers of the book.”
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Over at the Free Beacon, I take a look at a laudable new introduction to Homer.
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A history of the menorah: “This richly illustrated academic study begins with an image straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Steven Fine, a professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, is standing on a scaffold 20 feet above an ancient Roman roadway in 2012, centimeters away from a relief carving of a menorah on the Arch of Titus. The arch, built around A.D. 81, celebrates Titus’ triumphant march into Rome with the treasures of the ancient Hebrew temple in Jerusalem.”
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In Case You MIssed It:
James Panero on the museum today.
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The weird, true story of the blind, homeless composer named Moondog.
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How to translate Shakespeare into American Sign Language: “There are few lines in literature as memorable as ‘To be, or not to be—that is the question.’ Uttered in the third act of Hamlet, the soliloquy offers a poignant examination of whether it is better to quietly bear the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ or to die, and ‘end the heartache’. The line has been delivered innumerable times across the world, and each actor offers a unique interpretation through pauses, tone and gesture.” But a verbatim translation translation of the line is impossible in ASL: “Often ASL masters cannot simply transfer words—they have to replace them entirely. ‘To be or not to be’ poses a particular problem because the verb ‘to be’ does not exist in ASL.”
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The left’s war on science
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Classic Essay: Robert Conquest, “But What Good Came of it at Last: An Inquest on Modernism”
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Interview: Ben Domenech talks to Will Rahn of CBS about the smugness of the press and American communities
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