- Books: “Galore”
Crummey’s expansive yarn begins mysteriously, when a mute albino is pulled from the belly of a whale, and ends when the albino’s descendant, several generations later, plunges into one. Between lies the folkloric history of Paradise Deep, a Newfoundland fishing community composed of “implacable barrens . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Hell”
Hatcher McCord is a news anchor with an unusual assignment: to ask Hell’s tortured celebrity denizens, “Why do you think you’re here?” In this compelling surrealist romp, McCord is chauffeured through Hell’s sulfurous streets by Richard Nixon in Satan’s own . . ....
- Books: “Eden.”
In Hedaya’s fatalistic and melodramatic novel, a rural Israeli community called Eden, intended as a “paradise for the children” of those who snatched up farmland and built nearly identical tract houses there, has become instead host to a grim collection of contemporary maladies: terrorism, infertility, pedophilia . . . (Subscription required.)...
- James Surowiecki: The crisis in customer service.
American workers are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. That’s the clear message of flight attendant Steven Slater’s emergence as a “working-class hero,” after he threw his job away with a tirade against passengers and a . . ....
- Books: “Too Big to Fail”
Sorkin, a business reporter and columnist for the Times, tells the story of how the financial crisis unfolded from the perspective of some of the giants of finance, who, seen close up, appear to be disconcertingly petty. Sorkin’s analysis is fairly perfunctory (it doesn’t go much . . ....
- Books: “Darwin’s Armada”
This geographically expansive account of the rise of evolutionary theory traces the lives and travels of four titans of nineteenth-century biology: Darwin, the botanist Joseph Hooker, the physiologist Thomas Huxley, and Alfred Russel Wallace, a fearless globetrotter whose dangerous and often unpleasant journeys in the Amazon and the Malay . . ....
- Anna McDonald: “Horse Piano.”
The idea is to get a horse, a Central Park workhorse.
A horse who lives in a city, over in the hell part of Hell’s
Kitchen, in a big metal tent.
You have to get one who is dying.
Maybe you get his last day on the job . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Emily Nussbaum: “The Loving Story,” “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” on HBO.
HBO has two new documentaries, each dramatizing a miscarriage of justice. In January, the cable channel began airing Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” which was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary. It’s the capper to their nearly two-decade . . . (Subscription required.)...
- James Surowiecki: Why Banks Stay Big
Before the financial crisis, the banking industry was too concentrated and clubby. And now? It’s even more so. In the midst of the crisis, the country’s four biggest banks—Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo—actually got bigger. Thanks primarily to . . ....
- The Human Instinct to Stretch – Release Your Inner Cat
Each of us has a built-in solution to the impact of technology on our body (think of the software built into a computer). All of us have a built-in instinct to stretch. Your body wants to correct and improve its posture all the time because it wants to be efficient, just like a computer....
- Who Wants a Healthy Home?
They say a house is built by human hands, but a home is built by human hearts. People want their homes to be safe and free from harm and danger. But harm and danger do not only come from home invasions with robbery intentions. These negative elements could be in the form of health problems. Do family members or people who live in the house suffer from back aches and neck creaks?...
- Resilience and Redundancy in Transportation
Is it possible to build a self-healing distribution infrastructure? In other words, is it possible to build a system that delivers to our society everything that we need, one which can never completely break down? Sure it is, and when you couple that with capitalism, I think what you'll find is there is a built-in redundancy in the transportation system in the United States of America....
- Books: “The News Where You Are.”
O’Flynn’s plots unspool in the postwar English landscapes you never see on Masterpiece Theatre. Frank Allcroft is a television anchor on a Birmingham news show specializing in human-interest stories: local murders, savory-pie competitions, unexpected holes opening up in pensioners’ back gardens. But off . . ....
- Five Ways to Do Nothing and Bring Stillness Into Your Life
We live in a world filled with input from: television, radios, internet, social networks, email, new broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, white papers, books, e-books, movies and more. Our society is fast paced and we are proud of our ability to multi-task. Taking time to find stillness can make us less of a human doing and more of a human being....
- Allison Silverman: “Community Service.”
As soon as my husband and I moved across the street from the Iglesia Pentecostal, I knew I wanted to help the little Latin church. There was just so much about it to like. A church is part of what makes a place a community, and that’s important . . ....
- Immune System Facts That Work
The human body is phenomenal and baffling at the same time. Even the most advanced scientists and surgeons around the world fail to answer some questions. Then again, we do know what each major part of the human anatomy does and was built for....
- Stephen King: “Premium Harmony”
They’ve been married for ten years and for a long time everything was O.K.—swell—but now they argue. Now they argue quite a lot. It’s really all the same argument. It has circularity. It is, Ray thinks, like a dog track. When they . . ....
- Gold Statues
In crisis times, people look for safe havens for their savings. For most of us, money is the top of mind. But there is one asset that kept its value from ancient times. It was valuable then and it is today. If you're looking for a safe store of wealth, here's one with credentials of 1000 years....
- Books: “Americans in Paris”
A vivid gallery of expatriates animates this chronicle of Paris during the Second World War. Drawing heavily on primary source material, Glass narrates the Nazi Occupation year by year, unfolding stories of resilience and despair: Sylvia Beach, the proprietor of Shakespeare & Company, refuses to sell her last copy of . . ....
- Books: “The Lonely Polygamist.”
Set in the nineteen-seventies, this expansive novel focusses on Golden, the patriarch of a four-wife, twenty-eight child, three-house family, part of a fundamentalist Mormon sect in a small town in Utah. Trailed by a sharp loneliness made all the keener by his boisterous family, Golden commutes . . ....
- Communicating With Your Pets During Stressful Times
During times of national and personal crisis, much like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill tragedy, our animals are very sensitive to picking up on the emotional stress levels within our households. We often shelter our children from the stress of the grown-up world, but how often do you say, oh my pet understands every word I say? ...
- Argument ‘Style’ Can Hurt a Marriage
Spouses who tune out during an argument can hurt their marriage and increase the risk for divorce, a study shows....
- John Lahr: “All’s Well That Ends Well” and “Measure for Measure”
8220;The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together,” one of the courtiers in “All’s Well That Ends Well” says in a piece of throwaway brilliance that reveals Shakespeare’s argument and his theatrical game. The ever-changing . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “True Compass”
It’s hard to pinpoint the moment in this memoir when Ted Kennedy first seems like a grownup. It’s later than it ought to be—well after his election to the Senate. You think he’s there when he’s the one who must . . ....
- Why You Should Donate Your Car to Charity
If you are considering donating your car to a charity or cause like Habitat for Humanity or the Salvation Army that is right in your own community you are probably wondering what the real benefits will be for your community. If you are like most people that want to donate your old car to a charity or organization that will directly benefit the community that you live in at the moment, you...
- Used Diesel Vans For Sale
During the winter of 1976-1977, one faith based community in Albuquerque, NM could have used information on used diesel vans for sale. A member of that community had taken up the task of finding a second hand van, one that he could purchase. He planned to use it for transporting those community members who lacked any type of motored vehicle....
- Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
goatTitle-->COMMUNITY BOOKSTORE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY
On Sept. 17 at 2, Paul Auster, Jonathan Safran Foer, Siri Hustvedt, Nicole Krauss, Mary Morris, Jon Scieszka, and others help Brooklyn’s Community Bookstore celebrate its longevity by reading material from their favorite authors of the past four decades. The reading takes . . ....
- Paul Goldberger: The house that Goldman Sachs built.
New York’s great financial institutions have traditionally seen architecture as a way of attracting notice. In 1960, when the Chase Manhattan Bank built a huge glass skyscraper in lower Manhattan, its name and logo were all over the building, and, just to make sure no one missed the . . ....
