Staff Reviews
Frank S. Meyer and the history of fusionism
With The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, Daniel J. Flynn has produced a biography valuable to both political novices and serious students of the conservative movement. Laymen will gain from…
Jerry Garcia biography explores counterculture history
Former Los Angeles Times man Jim Newton, in his book Here Beside the Rising Tide, picked a representative subject through which to judge the achievements and excesses of the 1960s counterculture: Grateful Dead guitarist and…
New Carole King biography is the first dedicated solely to the music legend
The Shirelles, an all-black girl group out of New Jersey, had just cracked the Top 40 in September 1960 and needed a follow-up hit. Don Kirshner, impresario of a songwriting factory in Manhattan's Brill Building, gave…
Smithsonian’s ‘Futures in Space’ exhibit is oddly backward-looking
The jewel of the new "Futures in Space" exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., is a Blue Origin New Shepard crew capsule. Visitors who come to the museum to be in the presence…
‘KPop Demon Hunters’ is a Netflix musical about harmony
KPop Demon Hunters, a Netflix original movie released worldwide on June 20, quickly became the most-watched movie on the platform, amassing over 314 million views by mid-September. It also earned much popular praise and…
Russell Lee’s portraits of poverty in coal country
The best antidote for politicized nostalgia that hails an imagined idyllic yesteryear full of abundant blue-collar jobs? Taking a good, hard look at how those workers actually lived. "Power & Light," a temporary…
‘Eddington’ is a movie about COVID politics
There's never been a movie quite like Eddington. This latest offering from the independent film studio A24 is ripped from the headlines of summer 2020, when the dual crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd…
A Love Tale’ retells Bram Stoker’s classic novel
Luc Besson's Dracula: A Love Tale is a conservative interpretation of Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel. The film begins in 1480 with Prince Vladimir and Princess Elisabeta of Romania. Vlad is called by the Church…
‘Mood Machine’ gets Spotify wrong
Critiques of technology often downplay, deny, or ignore the advantages that tech firms offer to their users. Take Mood Machine, Liz Pelly's book assailing the audio streaming giant Spotify. Some of Spotify's…
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