Stephen Metcalf
Articles by Stephen Metcalf
The Last American Philosopher?
Richard Rorty.
Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher, By Neil Gross; University of Chicago Press, 367 pages, $32.50. read more »
A Royal Appetite for Books
Getty Images
A very public woman.
The delights of Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader begin with its title, a gentle but deft play on words, and flow forth in easeful perfection for the 120 pages that follow. read more »
Tricky, Abstruse Questions Fielded by Frayn the Brain
Eamonn McCabe
Michael Frayn (b. 1933), playwright, novelist, translator and philosopher.
The world is a scrim, left blank for the tints and whorls of the ego. read more »
The Last Gasp of the 1950's, In Trashy, Sexy Cinemascope
Thanks to the auteur theory, instead of a lot of antiquated factory product and the studio P. read more »
Upmarket, Tastefully Dirty And Deeply Uninvolving
God having lavished so much on the exterior, Natalie Portman doesn't deserve an inner life. read more »
Arrogant Bastard's Contempt Enlivens Waspish Melodrama
Darryl Zanuck loved the story but hated the choice of writer-director-an "arrogant bastard" with "fo read more »
Self-Help Prescription: A Double Dose of Culture
Status Anxiety, by Alain de Botton. Pantheon, 306 pages, $24.
read more »
Wading Into the Aural Tide: Pop and the Examined Life
Sonata for Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life, by Geoffrey O'Brien. read more »
A City's Shining Moment Helps Shape Our Heritag
Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind , by James Buchan. read more »
What's Going On in the Bedroom? Don't Freak Ma-It's Obscurity Rock
What is it about Felt? read more »
The Shame of No Shame: Fawning, Sniping in Media Land
Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Mes read more »
Where Did All the Money Go? Two Versions of One Sad Story
The Roaring Nineties , by Joseph E. Stiglitz. W.W. Norton, 256 pages, $25.95.
read more »
Semi-Impenitent Communist, Magnanimous to the Last
Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life, by Eric Hobsbawm. read more »
Black Market Bonanzas Exposed-A Secret History of Our Times
Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market , by Eric Schlosser. read more »
Weird Science of Child Rearing Thrives on Hope and Anxiety
Raising America: Experts, Parents and a Century of Advice About Children, by Ann Hulbert. Alfred A. read more »
When Stand-Up Grew Up: Comedy's Midcentury Flowering
Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s , by Gerald Nachman. read more »
Precocious, Post-Ironic Purdy Takes His Rectitude on Tour
Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World, by Jedediah Purdy. Alfred A. read more »
Diving into the Dividend Fray, Pondering Perverse Effects
Everybody knew a plan to cut the corporate dividend tax was on its way. Buttotal elimination? read more »
Bullion on the Bubble; Blodget on the Skids
Gold, the ultimate pre-postmodern investment, had a big 2002, with its best annual percentage gain s read more »
Business Press Loves Spitzer, Its Beautiful New Cover Boy
The great question kicking around the pages of the financial press as it crawledtoward New Year's 20 read more »
Two Paths Diverged in a Wood-One Is Booby-Trapped for Sure
World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Violence and Global Instability , b read more »
Whistle-blower's Grim Tale: Naughty Boys on Wall Street
Tales from the Boom-Boom Room: Women vs. Wall Street , by Susan Antilla. read more »
Global Sing-Along Out of Key-Guess Whose Fault That Is?
One World: The Ethics of Globalization , by Peter Singer. read more »
Our Charismatic Ex-Mayor Sells His Stuff to C.E.O.'s
Leadership , by Rudolph Giuliani, with Ken Kurson. read more »
Being Bill Gates' Best Friend (And Running Microsoft, Too)
Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft , by Fredric Alan Maxwell. read more »
Frankenstein's Many Friends: Science, Quackery and Automata
Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life , by Gaby Wood. Alfred A. read more »
Black Culture as Commodity, Pop Culture as Racial Eraser
American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America , by Leon E. Wynter. read more »
Another Day, Another Scandal-Bitter Fruit of a Free Market
Buy, Lie, and Sell High: How Investors Lost Out on Enron and the Internet Bubble , by D. read more »
The How and Why of Enron-And Next: Who's Going to Jail?
What Went Wrong at Enron: Everyone's Guide to the Largest Bankruptcy in U.S. History , by Peter C. read more »
Trading 'Fizzy' and 'Mr. Softee' And Talking on the Air, 24/7
I remember the first time I saw James Cramer on TV. read more »
A Couple of Cartoon Villains, Their Epic Clash Over Marvel
Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel Comics Empire-And Both Lost, by Dan Raviv. read more »
In Mesabi Iron-Range Mines, A Lode of Sexual Harassment
Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That ChangedSexual Harassment Law , by read more »
Fraud, S&M and St. Francis: A Riotous Bull-Market Fable
The Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World and Led the Feds on One of the Most Pub read more »
The Way the Music Died: Memoirs of a Corporate Crime
Exploding:The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes, and Hustlers of the Warner Music Group , by
read more »
The Big-Tent Theory of Terror: From Bin Laden to Kissinger
Here's one story you've been hearing a lot lately: 9/11 represents the clash of two incompatible glo read more »
The Street: Sex, Drugs and Cats
Down 42nd Street: Sex, Money, Culture, and Politics at the Crossroads of the World , by Marc Eliot. read more »
Leading a Life, Not In Extremis, But In Peace
I live on Hudson Street, north of Canal, pretty much in the exact spot where Jane Jacobs wrote her c read more »
Ethical Shock Therapy Courtesy of 'Professor Death'
Writings on an Ethical Life , by Peter Singer. read more »
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boob Tube
Everything You Think You Know About Politics … And Why You're Wrong , by Kathleen Hall Jamieson. read more »
The Swag Belly of Arkansas And Its Clinton-Hating Spawn
The Hunting of the President: The 10-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton , by Joe Cona read more »
Eminent, Ironic, Unpopular: The Hopeful Richard Rorty
Philosophy and Social Hope , by Richard Rorty. read more »
