More Noted Things

by Cliopatria

Ken Johnson,"At the Height of Power for the Netherlands, the City in Glorious Detail," NYT, 29 January, and Blake Gopnik,"The 'Golden' Compass," Washington Post, 3 February, review"Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age," an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The Post's slide show.

Stephen Taylor reviews Siân Rees's Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships that Stopped the Slave Trade for the Times of London, 30 January.

John Wilson,"Ah, Wilderness!" NYT, 30 January, reviews Donald Worster's A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir and Bonny J. Gisel's Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy.

Martin Pugh,"Edward Carpenter, father of the twenty-first century," TLS, 28 January, reviews Sheila Rowbotham's Edward Carpenter: A life of liberty and love.

Claudia Roth Pierpont,"Another Country," New Yorker, 9 February, reviews Magdalena J. Zaborowska's James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile.

Sam Tanenhaus,"Conservatism Is Dead," TNR, 18 February, is"an intellectual autopsy of the movement" in the United States.

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Ralph E. Luker - 2/5/2009

Beyond that, btw, do you and Stepp just want to quibble about an article's title or would either of you care to, you know, *read* the article and do the harder work of engaging its argument?

Ralph E. Luker - 2/5/2009

a) Tanenhaus is the empathetic biographer of Whittaker Chambers; and b) he was, with me, a member of Conservativenet. What more evidence do you want?

Les Baitzer - 2/5/2009

"Sam Tanenhaus's credentials as a conservative intellectual are pretty well established."

I'm not sure what you would cite to reinforce that statement Ralph, but I'd be interested in reading your support of it.

In a 2004 interview here: http://www.observer.com/node/48967 Tanenhaus describes himself by saying, "I'm very moderate by nature," and his friend Terry Teachout describes him thusly, "Sam is neither conservative nor neoconservative," [...] "He is an old-fashioned anti-communist Jewish liberal intellectual who still gets excited about Saul Bellow."

As to the title of his work to which you linked, "Conservatism Is Dead," Tanenhaus has to take a high number in a long line of pundits offering the same grim observation since November 4th.

All in that queue should take heed of Twain's advice in 1897, "The report of my death is an exaggeration."

Ralph E. Luker - 2/4/2009

Sam Tanenhaus's credentials as a conservative intellectual are pretty well established. I'm inclined to link to what he publishes. If you're so certain that "liberalism is dead", perhaps you'll write the persuasive analytical piece to that effect and, perhaps, I'll link to it.

William J. Stepp - 2/4/2009

Deregulated market? Is he kidding or just ignorant of reality?
And if he had written on "Liberalism Is Dead" (which it most assuredly is), would you have linked to it?