James K. Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett, “Dow 36,000”; Todd Oppenheimer, “Schooling the Imagination”; Garry Wills, “Lincoln's greatest Speech?”; Alan Wolfe, “The Mystique of Betty Friedan”; and much more.
"Emancipation is the demand of civilization," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in April, 1862. "That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue." Atlantic articles by Emerson and Frederick Douglass comment on Lincoln's greatest decision, and his greatest legacy.
Has the long-running bull market been a contemporary version of tulipmania? In explaining their new theory of stock valuation, the authors argue that in fact stock prices are much too low and are destined to rise dramatically in the coming years
Frederick Douglass called it "a sacred effort," and Lincoln himself thought that his Second Inaugural, which offered a theodicy of the Civil War, was better than the Gettysburg Address
She helped to change not only the thinking but the lives of many American women, but recent books throw into question the intellectual and personal sources of her work.
Waldorf schools, which began in the esoteric mind of the Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner, have forged a unique blend of progressive and traditional teaching methods that seem to achieve impressive results -- intellectual, social, even moral.
Basil dressed like a man, with shirt and pants, but he had the long snout of a dog, yellow eyes as scary as a snake's, and goat hooves fitted tightly into human shoes.
In the terrible desert and desolate massif of Xinjiang, the Beijing government faces a volatile mixture of ethnic groups, some of whom are hostile to all that is Chinese.
The GOP can either defend the United States or serve the damaged and defective man who is now its president.
There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president.
Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests—maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter.
Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded.
The president found no safe harbor on his favorite network after his controversial press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Updated at 10:29 p.m. ET
When Donald Trump stood side by side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and announced he was taking Putin’s word over that of his own intelligence community, talking heads spun on cable news. And rightfully so.
On CNN, Anderson Cooper called Trump’s performance “disgraceful.” Cooper’s face was noticeably cringing and his voice was shaking. John King called the event “the surrender summit.” Dana Bash said journalists “asked the questions of Vladimir Putin that the president of the United States failed to do.”
All par for the course from CNN. The big surprise was going on over at Fox News, where the consternation and outrage were only slightly more restrained.
The day started with Fox and Friends’ Brian Kilmeade taking issue with Trump’s pre-meeting tweet, which read: “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!”
The country can no longer afford to wait to ascertain why President Trump has subordinated himself to Putin—it must deal with the fact that he has.
We still do not know what hold Vladimir Putin has upon President Trump, but the whole world has now witnessed the power of its grip.
Russia helped Donald Trump into the presidency, as Robert Mueller’s indictment vividly details. Putin, in his own voice, has confirmed that he wanted Trump elected. Standing alongside his benefactor, Trump denounced the special counsel investigating the Russian intervention in the U.S. election—and even repudiated his own intelligence appointees.
This is an unprecedented situation, but not an uncontemplated one. At the 1787 convention in Philadelphia, the authors of the Constitution worried a great deal about foreign potentates corrupting the American presidency.
Trump said nothing new in Helsinki—but his remarks clarified and distilled into a single frame his appalling disregard for an assault on America.
Even Fox News was appalled at President Trump’s performance at his Helsinki press conference alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin. The network, usually only too happy to cheer on the president, responded somewhat differently this time to Trump’s insistence that “President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial” of Russian involvement in election interference. Neil Cavuto, a Fox Business Network host, called the press conference “disgusting.” Appearing on Fox, Mary Kissel of the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board said that “President Putin scored a great propaganda victory by standing up with President Trump on that stage.” Newt Gingrich declared that Trump’s comments were “the most serious mistake of his presidency.”
The president of the United States took Vladimir Putin’s word over findings by several American agencies that Russia interfered with the 2016 election.
In an astonishing news conference on Monday, President Trump, standing next to Vladimir Putin, rejected the overwhelming consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
“They said, ‘I think it is Russia.’ I have President Putin. He just said it is not Russia,” Trump said in Helsinki after a two-hour private meeting with the Russian leader. “I will say this: I do not see any reason why it would be.”
Trump’s apparent willingness to take Putin’s word on the alleged interference coincides with a decline in U.S. relations with its closest allies around the world. Trump has criticized Canada, Mexico, and Europe on trade, NATO on defense, the U.K. government on its Brexit plan, and Germany and Sweden on immigration and crime. European capitals, especially, will have watched Monday’s meeting and subsequent news conference closely. Trump’s meeting last week with NATO allies was marked for its rancor. He called the EU a “foe” on trade, and criticized British Prime Minister Theresa May for her “soft” approach toward Brexit and suggested it may cost her a free-trade deal with the U.S. (He since walked back those remarks.)
The president’s remarks casting doubt on Russian interference in the 2016 election drew rebukes both implicit and explicit from those close to, and within, his own administration.
“Surreal.” “Extraordinary.” “Disgraceful.” Lawmakers in the U.S. and abroad appeared shell-shocked on Monday following President Trump’s press conference with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in which Trump again refused to condemn Putin for Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, even going so far as to deny the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia was responsible.
“I think we have both been foolish,” Trump said, when asked by a reporter whether he would hold Russia accountable “at all, for anything in particular.”
“We should have had this dialogue a long time ago, before I got to office,” Trump continued. “And I think we are all to blame.” Asked later whether he would denounce Russian interference and ask Putin to never do it again, Trump said he didn’t “see any reason why it would be Russia” that interfered, and began discussing the Democratic National Committee server that, according to the Justice Department, was hacked by Russian intelligence officers in 2016. “I really want to see the server,” Trump said, appearing to cast doubt on his administration’s conclusions. (The FBI obtained copies of the DNC server from the private firm hired to investigate the hack).
A major new study questions the common wisdom about how we should choose our careers.
Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, remembers asking an undergraduate seminar recently, “How many of you are waiting to find your passion?”
“Almost all of them raised their hand and got dreamy looks in their eyes,” she told me. They talked about it “like a tidal wave would sweep over them,” he said. Sploosh. Huzzah! It’s accounting!
Would they have unlimited motivation for their passion? They nodded solemnly.
“I hate to burst your balloon,” she said, “but it doesn’t usually happen that way.”
What Dweck asked her students is a common refrain in American society. The term “Follow your passion” has increased ninefold in English books since 1990. “Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” is another college-counseling standby of unknown provenance.
The comedian’s new Showtime series should be shocking, but its wildest stunts only confirm how trollish U.S. politics has become.
When Sacha Baron Cohen emerged as a comedy force in the late ’90s, the quality that powered his appeal was his shamelessness. Whether in character as the clueless white-boy rapper Ali G, the bigoted Kazakh journalist Borat, or the outrageous fashion reporter Bruno, Cohen delighted in asking questions far outside the realm of politeness and in tormenting the subjects (celebrity and non-celebrity alike) of his awkward mockumentary sketches. Sometimes, he’d dig deep enough to reveal the hidden prejudice or cynicism of whatever politician, etiquette coach, or random passer-by he was interviewing on camera.
When Cohen’s Da Ali G Show launched in 2000 in the UK, his brazenness was still exciting and novel to viewers. Who Is America?, which premiered July 15 on Showtime, is the comedian’s first TV series since Da Ali G Show went off the air in 2004, and it’s superficially similar. Though Cohen plays all-new characters, he’s pulling the same stunts, interviewing people (including politicians) under false pretenses and trying to goad them into saying something ridiculous (or at least nodding along in polite agreement as he does). But in the intervening years, shamelessness has become commonplace. The ongoing discourse in the United States, day in and day out, revolves around the dissolution of our political norms, and the best Cohen can do in his new show is loudly point that out.
Come Inside My Mind, airing on HBO Monday night, is a thoughtful and wistful portrait of an elusive subject.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to pump neurons,” Robin Williams announces in voiceover, over a black screen. “We are about to enter the domain of the human mind.” In the two hours that follow, the director Marina Zenovich tackles one of the most explosively cerebral subjects in comedy.Williams was someone whose creative energy was so vast that it seemed to overwhelm his body in performance, his limbs jerking and his face contorting as they tried to keep pace with his frantic, restless brain.
Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, which airs on HBO Monday night, ticks all the boxes ofa standard biography, charting Williams’s childhood, his early days in improv, his quick and destabilizing success with Mork & Mindy, and his path into film acting. Zenovich’s primary curiosity, though, seems to involve the mechanics of Williams’s genius. She layers scenes of his standup shows and old photographs on top of interviews with Williams’s family, friends, and peers. “In my head, my first sight of him was that he could fly, because of the energy,” David Letterman says. “All I could reallydo was hang onto the microphone for dear life, and here was a guy who could levitate.” But Williams’s manic onstage energy had a flip side, as Zenovich explores: addictions to drugs, alcohol, and affirmation; a particular discomfort when he wasn’t performing; and a profound fear of failure and abandonment, even at the height of his success.
