Non Fiction Archive |
Rainer Maria Rilke: The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation - He wrote letters. Many, many letters. When he died, aged 51, in 1926, Rainer Maria Rilke had written more than 14,000 letters. They've been collected. There’s the 270 page Letters
Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon - In 2010, Goldman Sachs decided not to fight government accusations that it had misled investors who bought one of its mortgage securities --- it paid a fine of $500 million.
Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence - I don’t know how I managed it, but I never studied the American Revolution. So when Bill Bodkin, a New York attorney and writer, offered to write about the origins
Rogues’ Gallery: de la Renta v. Gross - “To humiliate a good writer,” Norman Mailer said, “is to give him an ax.” Annette de la Renta has just sharpened the blade and offered the weapon to Michael Gross. Or is
Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals that Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art - Reading an independent, unauthorized history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is like taking a guided tour of a sausage factory --- if you like to enjoy the
Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic - The Times asked, "Are Men Obsessed with the Roman Empire?" Its answer: "Yes, Say Men." The piece begins: "The Roman Empire began in 27 B.C. and fell in A.D. 476.
Running Out of Water: The Looming Crisis and Solutions to Conserve Our Most Precious Resource - A few years ago, when we were deep in the fiction of “choosing a school” for the child, the director of admissions of the city’s most respected girls’ school asked
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Last Interview, and Other Conversations - Her father came to America from Russia when he was 13. He went to night school to learn English. He never had any formal education except Hebrew school in any
Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Exposure in the United States - Koch Industries is one of the ten most egregious air polluters in the United States. He and his family are also major donors to right-wing Republicans --- including groups
Samantha Power: A Problem from Hell - She's now the President's choice as Ambassador to the United Nations, but in June of 1989. Samantha Power, just finished with her freshman year at Yale, was working
Schlepping Through the Alps: My Search for Austria’s Jewish Past with Its Last Wandering Shepherd - Schlepping Through the Alps: My Search for Austria's Jewish Past with Its Last
See you in September? Yes, but I leave these for you - SHOPPING ON AMAZON: The business model of this site is Amazon. You start here, buy something there, Butler gets a commission. And not just on the item reviewed. Anything you
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships - At some point, you may have been high enough or drunk enough or just clear enough to be struck by a radical insight: We don’t have to pray to go
Shah of Shahs - Between a tyrant and a religious fanatic, who’s worse? When the Shah of Iran was overthrown, four decades ago, we might have said it was the Shah. But for all
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution -
Snow Day Reading - The Kindle was made for Snow Days. Many will work from home today, and all praise to those good souls. But at some point even the obsessively dedicated will be
Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade - “420” started as a secret code among kids in the early 1970s. A group of friends at San Rafael High School in Marin County, California would meet at 4:20 PM
Stealing Lincoln’s Body - I'd forgotten that it took Abraham Lincoln all night to die. I never knew that his body was turned over to the same undertakers who'd performed those intimate
Stephen Hawking: Brief Answers to the Big Questions - Stephen Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death. He died on March 14, 2018, the 199th anniversary of Einstein’s birth. In the 76 years of his life,
