Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. Music by Harold Arlen. Performance by Judy Garland. How the “Song of the Century” was born.

As Adrienne Rich said, poetry isn’t “a mass-market product”, but when you need a good poem, nothing else will do.

Forget the future: What is science fiction saying about the present?

Like any triple-play, Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia is rare entertainment.

A letter from Istanbul.

Civilian graduate programs broaden a soldier’s horizons.

The 21^st won’t be the Next American Century. Will it be anyone’s?

American emotional conventions have changed, not always for the better.

Von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others finally gets under the skin of Stasiland.

Voltaire’s Lettres Philosophiques paved Tocqueville’s way to America.