Good Writing. Serious e-Reading.

Despite information about the plight of the European Jews, the major Jewish organizations in Europe and the U.S. either failed to act or failed to persuade governments to act. Even when the “final solution” became apparent, some leading Jewish figures remained unconvinced of the catastrophe.  

The 1849 Gold Rush in California brought to a boiling point the new state’s unruly politics and produced mob rule in the muddy streets of San Francisco. Cecelia Holland’s compelling account of these events reveals a disturbing underside of democratic government in a nation headed for civil war.

From the 1920s to the 1960s, Jewish clothiers supplied the accoutrements of success—the Ivy League style—at American universities, but especially at Yale, one of the oldest and most traditional. At the same time Yale admitted few Jews as students. And then a funny thing happened: as the penchant for repp ties and natural-shoulder suits declined at Yale, the influx of Jews—and other minorities—increased. Here’s the story of how this came about, and how Yale’s idea of success changed, related by someone who was on the scene. 

The important background and text of President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Voting Rights speech to Congress. In his remarks Johnson challenged the moral values of Americans and ultimately won the greatest victory for black Americans since Emancipation. 

How the quest for early detection of prostate cancer and depression has led to mass screenings, which in turn have revealed an incidence of disease that is beyond common sense and cautious medical practice.  The entire process has led to patients who have been not helped but damaged. 

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, has become one of the more popular psychological conditions of our time. First used to describe the symptoms related to combat experiences in war, today a diagnosis of PTSD has been expanded to include some of the most common everyday situations. How it got that way is the subject of Stewart Justman’s fascinating exploration of the rise of PTSD—a story of a questionable diagnosis and of medicine gone astray.

Married to a wealthy American slaveholder, Fanny Kemble recorded her experience on her husband’s estates from the perspective of an “insider” as well as an “outsider.” Her ability to translate life so vividly onto the page provided readers with a sense of being eyewitness to events.

Hilton Kramer explains abstract art's early ties to utopian politics, locating its initial development among the Russian avant-garde, the De Stijl movement in the Netherlands, and the German Bauhaus, and exploring the ideas of these pioneers.