Andre Schiffrin’s The Business of Books provides some interesting history on big publishing in New York. For that alone it was worth reading. Schiffrin lead Pantheon Books for decades and founded the New Press in 1990, so he is a man of experience. But Schiffrin does not analyze the changes to the publishing industry, he […]
Kristie Miller, Ellen and Edith
For some time I have been struggling to find a near-synonym for “uxorious.” It is an ugly old word that rebukes a man for being “overly fond” (Webster’s) or “submissively fond” (OED) of his wife. Its earliest written usage (1598), by Joseph Hall, bishop of Norwich and poet, growled of “mannish housewives [who] make a […]
The Mint Julep and Derby Day
The 137th Kentucky Derby is on Saturday, May 7, and I will be watching. I am not so sure that the race truly is the “greatest two minutes in sport” as its promoters insist, but it is exciting…(Read more at The Weekly Standard).
Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureacracy
My retro-review of Michael Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, 30th Anniversary Edition (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010), appears in the March/April issue of Public Administration Review. Lipsky’s book remains a terrific study of government, particularly how agencies and their employees work with the public. As I note in my review, “Street-Level Bureaucracy […]
Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and
The January 31, 2011 copy of The Weekly Standard carries my review of Okrent’s diverting book on Prohibition. In short, I liked it. The prose is often funny and the illustrations are very good. Okrent organized the material very well.
The Effects of Prohibition on Our Palate...
Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (Scribner, 2010) encouraged me to think more deeply about what we drink and why. On December 3, The Smart Set, an online magazine at Drexel University, published my essay, “The Wet, the Dry, and the Ugly.” If you haven’t heard of this magazine, please give […]