February 2008
Everyday Jacket
Richard Price has called The Wire “as close to a novel as anything on TV.” Sam Sacks examines whether Price’s new book Lush Life is as close to TV as anything in a novel.
One Encounter:
Learning to Shudder
In this regular feature, John Cotter examines two brutal, disturbing pieces of 20th-Century German art—and they come disturbingly close to examining him in return.
Flat________
A poem by Chad Reynolds
A Kind of Glory
Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought turns on the 1828 presidential race between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, a tawdry epic of mudslinging the likes of which would not be seen until our own era. Steve Donoghue revisits how it all, alas, began.
Good and Bad Replications
Studio interference severely compromised Ridley Scott’s visually stunning 1982 film Blade Runner. Now with Blade Runner: The Final Cut on DVD, Brian Kirker explores the remastering of a masterpiece.
Lost in the Verisylum
Lianne Habinek maps the postmodern mazes of Jesse Ball’s maddening, memorable debut novel Samedi the Deafness.
‘What Wickedness is Here, Hooper?’
Steve Donoghue continues his “Year with the Tudors” with this look at Chris Skidmore’s biography of Edward VI, the ill-starred son of Henry VIII who might have been the most formidable Tudor monarch of all.
Not Quite Détente
Books lamenting our fractured political system are as commonplace these days as polling and pundits, but, as Greg Waldmann discovers, the historical rigor of Ronald Brownstein’s The Second Civil War helps elevate it above its pandering peers.
Absent Friends:
Oh True Apothecary!
In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue celebrates the books of the 17th-Century physician Nicholas Culpeper, whose medicine may be archaic but whose wisdom and literary merit are by no means obsolete
The OLM Quiz:
Whole Lotta Love
We turn our frowns upside-down with this Valentine’s Day-themed quiz.
The Cover Photo for February 2008, “Hey… are you going to eat that?” is by Rik Stavale, a graduate student living in Helsinki, Finland. Rik’s photographs can be viewed on Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/elavats/
Print This Article
