Review of Fire, Snow & Honey: Voices from Kurdistan edited by Gina Lennox.

The French, après tout, are not unlike Americans.

The Kerry-core sophisticates do not understand that Bush did not start a war, he only chose not to surrender once that war started.

The combination of a rich culture of death with the looming threat of catastrophe is an intoxicating mélange for the spirit, and it explains why so many great writers have been drawn to New Orleans.

Never have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, all over the world, yielding populations in decline.

Today's utopianism, according to Jean-François Revel, has often become a subversive and, ironically, cynical tool for augmenting one's power while absolving one of the need to use it responsibly and while preserving one's saintly image.

If you can avoid treating new American cuisine as if it werea patriotic endeavor one simply must pursue, you will discover that it is a festal endeavor that one can enjoy in relative simplicity.

If we are left with English departments that do not need Shakespeare, then who needs English departments?