For fifteen years, Lewis Lapham has written a monthly column in Harper's Magazine, for which he won a 1995 National Magazine Award for his "exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity." This major collection of Lapham's essays defines his distinct view of the way the world really works, through vivid analysis of media, language, culture, and education. Lapham brings an acute eye to the ways of Washington, the manners of the money class, and the stirrings of the global econo...

Extensively expanded and revised, with a new foreword by Thomas FrankIn the United States, happiness and wealth are often regarded as synonymous. Consumerism, greed, and the insatiable desire for more are American obsessions. In the native tradition of Twain, Veblen, and Mencken, the editor of Lapham's Quarterly here examines our fascination with the ubiquitous green goddess.Focusing on the wealthy sybarites of New York City, whom Lewis H. Lapham h...

In twenty-five years of imperial adventure, America has laid waste to its principles of democracy. The self-glorifying march of folly steps off at the end of the Cold War, in an era when delusions of omnipotence allowed the market to climb to virtual heights, while society was divided between the selfish and frightened rich and the increasingly debt-ridden and angry poor. The new millennium saw the democratic election of an American president nullified by the Supreme Court, and the pretend...

Until the watershed leak of top-secret documents by Edward Snowden to the Guardian UK and the Washington Post, most Americans did not realize the extent to which our government is actively acquiring personal information from telecommunications companies and other corporations. As made startlingly clear, the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on every phone call Americans have made over the past seven years. In that same time, the NSA and the FBI have...

"[A] merciless but often humorous look at the shortcomings of American politics" by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Parliament of Whores ( Booklist).Don't Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards is a brilliant, disturbing, hilarious, and sobering look at why politics and politicians are a necessary evil—but only just barely necessary. Read P. J. O'Rourke on the pathetic nature of our attempts to govern ourselves and lau...

Like his National Book Award—winning United States, Gore Vidal’s scintillating ninth collection, The Last Empire*,* affirms his reputation as our most provocative critic and observer of the modern American scene. In the essays collected here, Vidal brings his keen intellect, experience, and razor-edged wit to bear on an astonishing range of subjects. From his celebrated profiles of Clare Boothe Luce and Charles Lindbergh and his controversial essay about the Bill ...

From the preeminent columnist, historian, and bestselling author writing at the top of his game comes an essential collection of writing on politics, economics, culture, religion, and more.Conrad Black is one of our best known writers, historians, and businessmen. This never-before-published collection of Conrad's finest journalism, selected from many of the most prestigious publications in the English-speaking world, spans his full career. Included here are Conrad...

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan died in 2003 the Economist described him as "a philosopher-politician-diplomat who two centuries earlier would not have been out of place among the Founding Fathers." Though Moynihan never wrote an autobiography, he was a gifted author and voluminous correspondent, and in this selection from his letters Steven Weisman has compiled a vivid portrait of Moynihan's life, in the senator's own words.Before his four terms as Senator from New York, Moy...

The Peabody Award–winning journalist shares stories and insights into our country and the crises we face in an "eloquent selection of . . . commentaries" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).Millions of Americans have invited Bill Moyers into their homes over the years. With television programs covering topics from American history, politics, and religion to the role of media and the world of ideas, he has become one of America's most trusted journalists. ...

The words that echo through Geoffrey Nunberg's brilliant new journey across the landscape of American language evoke exactly the tenor of our times. Nunberg has a wonderful ear for the new, the comic and the absurd. He pronounces that: "'Blog' is a syllable whose time has come," and that "You don't get to be a verb unless you're doing something right," with which he launches into the effect of Google on our collective consciousness. Nunberg hears the shifting use of "Gallic" as we suddenly...

Gore Vidal has been described as the last 'noble defender" of the American republic. In Imperial America, Vidal steals the thunder of a right wing America -- those who have camouflaged their extremist rhetoric in the Old Glory and the Red, White, and Blue -- by demonstrating that those whose protest arbitrary and secret government, those who defend the bill of rights, those who seek to restrain America's international power, are the true patriots. "Those Americans who refuse to plunge blin...

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges makes a forceful case that liberal institutions have failed Americans by ceding power to self-serving and elitist corporations**“Uncompromising. . . . Hedges indicts the press, the Church, the arts, labor unions, universities, and the Democratic Party for failing to protect the middle and lower classes.” —**The New YorkerHistory has shown time and time again that when the liberal class...