U.S. Productivity Gets a Frightening Wake-up Call
Did you read that item in the paper last week? An air-traffic controller apparently fell asleep at Reagan International Airport in Washington, leaving two planes to land without ground guidance. The controller, now suspended while the incident is investigated, was on…
Why ‘Defunding’ Public Broadcasting Is a Crisis
It’s well enough that we can reasonably rely on the Senate to reject the egregious bill the House approved last week – the one “defunding” public broadcasting. But there the matter cannot sit. The larger question is what value Americans attach…
Japan: The Meltdown of Growth-At-Any-Cost
Long before the worst earthquake in Japan’s history produced the worst nuclearaccident in Japan’s history, nuclear power had acquired a menacing reputation among many Japanese. If the crisis in triplicate at the Fukushima power plant (where four nuclear reactors are…
The Real Reason China Should Worry America
A century ago this year a stupid little book called The Yellow Peril, by one G.G. Rupert, was published to popular acclaim. It was a prejudicial diatribe, but you have to ask how far we’ve come, given how fretful Americans…
The Deficit: Congress Fiddles as America Loses Ground
The recent news from Germany is encouraging for Europe—and sobering for the U.S. Beating all forecasts, unemployment has plunged to its lowest level in nearly 20 years. Business and consumer confidence is hitting records. It is getting hard to flinch…
Goldman-and-Facebook-Insiders-Trade-Others-Keep-Out
Have you received your invitation to invest in Facebook, the not-yet-listed social-networking phenom that has burst onto Wall Street with the excitement of a dot.com company a dozen years ago? I haven’t got mine, either. They must be in the…
A Near Perfect Spy Novelist
ABSOLUTE FRIENDS. By John le Carré. Little, Brown. 455 pp. $26.95. A year ago now, when the Bush Administration was preparing the world for an American invasion of Iraq, John le Carré wrote a column of scathing, sharp-toothed commentary for…
A Kiss in Java
INDONESIAN DESTINIES. By Theodore Friend. Belknap/Harvard. 628 pp. $35. INDONESIA: Peoples and Histories. By Jean Gelman Taylor. Yale. 420 pp. $39.50. In a broad square not far from the center of Jakarta, a large obelisk of concrete soars into the sky….
A Stone Unturned
Someone once described Graham Greene as the novelist of decolonizing Britain. England during and after the war and the imperial fall was his true subject, the uncut stone from which he chiseled his themes. Think of knob-kneed, lonely-hearted Wilson, the…
Excursions in the Real World
THE STORY OF LUCY GAULT. By William Trevor. Viking. 227 pp. $24.95. Why is so much fiction written in our language and why is so much of what is written of so little consequence? The novels come and go as…
Recent Comments