My grandfather was born in 1900 and his life followed the historic trajectories and sociocultural contours of America in the 20th century — he weathered two world wars and the Great Depression and lived to tell. He was educated and well-read, a cement company executive who traveled widely on company business, clapping the backs of power in foreign lands  — the Shah of Iran gave him an incredible wall-sized Persian rug, the ambassador of Mexico gave my grandmother a sterling silver tea set, etc. He taught Sunday School. Always voted Republican and subscribed to the National Review. He was […]

I was sitting in a lecture the other day about the population crisis we will be facing in the next few decades. By 2030, we will have over nine BILLION people, and apparently we are completely unprepared in almost every imaginable, and even unimaginable, way to handle the ramifications of this population explosion. It’s horrifying to think about, so it’s probably best to just ignore it, until we are in the midst of this unprecedented crisis. One man who hasn’t allowed himself the comfort of ignorance is Lawrence Cirelli, the author of the darkly comedic novel The Exit Broker. The […]

  BY CHARLIE TAYLOR In 1990, 22-year-old Christopher McCandless packed up his 1982 Datsun and embarked on an expedition through the Western United States that would ultimately cost him his life. McCandless, an unsettled individual with a spirit that needed to challenge any obstacles his mind could dream up, finished college in 1990 and appeared to be ready to join the never-ending assembly line of college students headed into professional oblivion. Seduced by the freedom and endless possibilities of the open road, McCandless shocked his parents by turning down the $25,000 fund given to him for his post-college pursuits and […]

  BY SHARNITA MIDGETT Today is the 103rd birthday of Rosa Parks, the woman who taught the world that bus seats are colorblind. The iconic story of her refusal to give up her seat on a bus — back in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama — so white people could sit down has been taught in American history classes for decades. What hasn’t been told, however, is the story of the woman underneath the icon. A new book called Our Auntie Rosa aims to remedy that. Written by Rosa Parks’ niece and nephew, Sheila McCauley Keys and Eddie B. Allen Jr., […]

Illustration by MICHAEL MAHLE BY ALEXEI ARCHER Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, widely regarded as one of the pinnacles of western literature, is a story of three brothers — Ivan, Dmitri, and Alexei — and their reunion in an unnamed provincial town in Russia, and the ensuing murder of their father, Fyodor Pavlovich. It is a novel that seeks to reconcile faith in God and atheism, free will and slavery, compassion and isolation. Although it was written in 1880, The Brothers Karamazov remains current in its approach and construction, utilizing modernist literary devices such as meta-narration, subjective reality and multiple points […]

  BY BEN LEHMAN Set in turn of the century Mississippi, The Sound and the Fury chronicles the decline of the Compsons, a once prominent southern family who have fallen into social disgrace. The Compsons are a family destroyed by alcoholism, patriarchy, and suicide; they represent the decay of the southern aristocracy after the Civil War. Other literary greats like Marcel Proust write about music and wine and society, but Faulkner explores the darkest parts of human nature and showcases our unending selfishness cruelty. Published in 1929 to positive reviews but minimal sales, The Sound and the Fury has remained […]

Illustrations by SHEPARD FAIREY BY MEGAN MATUZAK Patti Smith is a world renowned poet, painter and musician — the high priestess of punk, to be exact — but lately she’s been making her bones as a highly regarded memoirist. Her 2010 memoir, Just Kids, a coming-of-age chronicle of her time in New York City with artist Robert Mapplethorpe in the ‘60s and ‘70s, sold more than a half million copies and won a National Book Award. Her latest, M Train, is one part memoir, one part benediction and one part Homeric odyssey cataloging Smith’s “vagabondia,” a term of art for […]

  LOS ANGELES TIMES: Ahmad Fadil was a high school dropout, a video store clerk and a petty gangster who got tattoos, drank alcohol and sold drugs as a youth in Zarqa, his hometown in northeast Jordan. His mother was so alarmed she sent him to a Muslim self-help class, and he soon found another calling. By the time a U.S. airstrike killed him in 2006, Abu Musab Zarqawi — Fadil’s nom de guerre — had led the Sunni insurgency in Iraq that killed tens of thousands of people and humbled a global superpower by miring it in a vicious […]

  BY BEN LEHMAN Marcel Proust’s, In Search of Lost Time is one of the most celebrated pieces of literature in history. First published in 1913, the story spans across seven volumes, over four thousand pages, and includes some two thousand characters. It chronicles the life of a fictionalized Proust — seen through the subjective lens of his own memories — the novel explores facets of life such as love, society, sexuality, and jealousy. A novelist and critic, Proust was born to a wealthy family in Auteuil, France in 1871.  He was a frail, sickly child, and his ill health […]