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"Not affiliated with The Idler Magazine of London, England."

When Helmut Rosenfeld mentions the proposed sale of the pictures, Rachel explodes in fury. Chapter Eight: Underpainting....

Author Harvey Wheeler fondly remembers his own encounters with two recently departed Hollywood literary figures...

Don't worry about George W. Bush's finger on the button. Fail-Safe author -- and Nader supporter -- Harvey Wheeler says he can bring Bush up to speed in no time, using a remedial reading course...

The recent explosion of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis reveals the structure of the "peace process" contained an inner flaw that required only pressure on the right point to collapse it...

According to The Idler's Jerusalem correspondent, Yasser Arafat's broadcasts are making one thing perfectly clear: "The message isn't `We want 90 percent of the West Bank,' but, `We want it all and there is no room here for both Jews and Arabs.'"

Now it is over. Milosevic is gone. The Balkans can return to their deserved slumber...

In a recent survey, the author discovered that many Americans are quite suspicious of public opinion polls...

"Filippo marvelled at these Americans. They grinned all the time like idiots and seemed to have no stomach for the extended negotiations favored in Europe. But they certainly were sharp about salesmanship and promotion." Chapter Seven: Speculations (Continued)...

"The smart money is getting into Americans," the dealer went on. "That's where the money is, but more important, they know something about merchandising. You buy an American artist and they don't just leave you hanging. They advertise, they get museum exhibitions, they get articles in magazines, and, poof, up goes the price." Chapter Seven: Speculations...

In a few years, scholars will be to do all their editing online, because their readers will be gaining a benefit even from the rough drafts, and the authors will gain a great benefit from their feedback . . .

"I cannot think of anything more dangerous for Israeli society than to turn violent against its Arab minority, a minority that has by and large sought to find a way to live with Jews . . ."

There are two types of Israelis: "dreamers" and "pragmatists." The dreamers believed in Arafat's promises in English. The pragmatists never believed in Arafat's promises in English -- but did believe his calls for violence in Arabic . . .

Who would have believed that a time would come when Gentiles were less upset by the prospect of a Jewish Vice President than Jews who feared possible anti-Semitic repercussions, should he win?

Rachel was still seething with the rage she had felt in New York. Those pictures were her own work. She had brought them back to life. They belonged to her more than they did to the artists who had originally painted them. Certainly she had more claim to them than Karl Baritsch. Chapter Six: Sketch. . .

Is it possible that Johann Sebastian Bach became the great composer he was because he fathered so many children?

New York Times correspondent David K. Shipler's portrait of Israel bears little relation to reality, argues the author of Into the Heart of Jerusalem . . .

People who are still planning to vote for Al Gore should "just say no" for many reasons, says Jeff Jacoby. Among them is a televised French kiss . . .

Canadians would learn to admire and respect him, but never love him. Many resented Pierre Trudeau -- even as they voted for him . . .

In the bombed-out ruins of post-war Munich, a secret contract endows an art conservation center. Chapter Five: Restoration (Continued) . . .

Rachel Haberman flies the red-eye from New York to meet Luc at Paris' Orly airport. Chapter Five: Restoration . . .

Columbia University is facing its most serious case of intellectual fraud since Charles Van Doren participated in the Quiz Show scandals. His name, says Jeff Jacoby, is Edward Said...

To understand the Harvard Russian aid scandal one must realize "all foreign advisors belong to either of three categories: the hustlers, the bureaucrats and the corporates..."

Wesley C. Till presents the Baritsch Collection to his board, then confronts something shocking about himself. Chapter Four: Exhibition (Continued) . . .

Back in New York City, New Museum potentate Wesley Calvin Till rides the Fifth Avenue Bus, contemplating his meeting with the Board of Directors. Chapter Four: Exhibition . . .

The best way to understand America's Newspaper Of Record may quite possibly be the way one reads the Bible, explains this excerpt from a provocative new book . . .

Today's Oxford Don would rather be a Phil Donahue than a D. Phil., as evidenced Professor's Zeldin's American book tour...

Thousands of art world denizens wanted to crash New York's Damien Hirst party. Our correspondent was there...

This week the United States Department of Justice filed a $40 million lawsuit against Harvard University under the False Claims Act -- alleging fraud in the Russian aid program. Did Harvard ruin Russia?

That tiny mobile phone stashed in your pocketbook, or clipped to your belt, may spell doom for telecommunications monopolies...

High in the Swiss Alps, Helmut Rosenfeld meets Count Filippo Bolza Pietruccino Vergazzi Cardini: Chapter Three: Deals...

Two simple phrases can make all the difference in how people are perceived, says international businesswoman Alexandra Boyle...

The Baron wakes up annoyed, in this continuing saga of the international art world. Chapter Two: Connoisseurs...

In a historic announcement, Independent Counsel Robert W. Ray calls a halt to the prosecution of the President and First Lady due to insufficient evidence...

The challenge facing the artist remains the same at all times: Who is to measure the distance between the original experience and its representation?

A small music shop in Baltimore tries to be the best classical CD store in the country, if not the world...

Alice Goldfarb Marquis' saga of the international art world continues today with the conclusion of Chapter One: Passion...

Charlie Clark ponders the possible implications of signing up for his own membership card . . .

Alice Goldfarb Marquis' saga of the international art world begins today. Chapter One: Passion...

Although Noam Chomsky is often categorized as a progressive, Werner Cohn argues his political writings can be better understood as a variation on classic themes in neo-Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda...

A new book makes the startling case that Republicans held President Clinton's Senate impeachment trial not to remove him from office, but to guarantee he stayed on...

Playwright (Stonewall Jackson's House) and screenwriter (The Distinguished Gentleman starring Eddie Murphy) Jonthan Reynolds has a new career writing about food. He explains why...

Chapter Thirteen presents the surprising conclusion to Charlie Clark's cult classic serialized e-novel about coming-of-age in the twilight of the 1960s...
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Ten
Chapter Nine
Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

In a challenge to the conventional wisdom, a leading authority on the ethics of armed conflict argues that the atomic bomb can be a force for good, preventing war and bringing peace...

The Idler's Election 2000 political analyst gives un-asked for campaign advice to the Green candidate...

On September 15th, 2000, a small Virginia town will celebrate the 175th Anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette's 1825 visit with a very big show...

In a provocative essay, the author of Fail Safe says it wasn't Bill Clinton who broke the American Presidency, but Ronald Reagan...

A poem written by Clive Kay, on a day when when the prospects for returning to his home on the farm, after four months away, seemed impossible, and where it seemed that there was no hope...

Chapter Twelve of Charlie Clark's cult classic serialized e-novel about coming-of-age in the twilight of the 1960s finds the school year ending, and Commencement looming ...
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Ten
Chapter Nine
Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

The author of The Art Biz finds New York dealer Richard Feigen's memoirs is like sitting down over a glass of V.S.O.P. and listening to an art world insider. Part of the fun is figuring out what has been omitted from his stories...

In a provocative analysis of the recent Peruvian election, one first-hand observer charges the opposition with the electoral equivalent of arson...

It's finally Prom Night! Chapter Eleven of Charlie Clark's cult classic serialized e-novel about coming-of-age in the twilight of the 1960s...
Chapter Ten
Chapter Nine
Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

The author of Fail Safe takes a long, hard, deep look at a successful Hollywood screenwriter's novel of Presidential life and love affairs in the White House during the Clinton Administration...

For years social scientists predicted "The End Of Work." But will the future bring "The End of Leisure" instead?

What's the answer to the challenge of protecting privacy on the Internet? Lance Cottrell's solution might appear to be a version of "Surfers Anonymous"...

Chapter Ten of Charlie Clark's cult classic serialized e-novel about coming-of-age in the twilight of the 1960s...
Chapter Nine
Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

In a moving account, Agustin Blazquez recalls his last moments in the land of his birth...

Strategically located Skopje bears witness to centuries of Greeks, Turks, WWI, WWII, Yugoslavian Communism, the post-Tito Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian-Albanian conflict -- and today presents a new market-driven Western orientation. Yet, somehow, the past of this small nation overshadows the present...

The co-author of Fail Safe argues it is high time for a revolution in learning, and puts forth a manifesto for a new form of education and culture...

The disasters facing two African countries are the fault of their political leaders as well as failed European and American policies, argues Michael Radu...

College looms for the protagonists in Chapter Nine of Charlie Clark's cult classic serialized e-novel about coming-of-age in the twilight of the 1960s... Click here to read author Charlie Clark's letter-to-the-editor of the Sunday New York Times Book Review
Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

After the defeat of the Argentine military in the Falklands/Malvinas war, a cultural policy -- known as oficialismo -- affected the country's film industry in unexpected ways...

Computers and the internet have expanded the human brain, explains the author of Fail Safe. The result of this technological advance is a virtual "third hemisphere" and all it promises for humankind...

In Chapter Two of their study of the political impact of the cyberspace, the authors argue that the Internet finally came of age as a communications medium thanks to Web publication of a single government document: The Starr Report...

Chapter Eight of Charlie Clark's cult classic serialized e-novel about coming-of-age in the twilight of the 1960s...

Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

Writer David Ehrenstein spent his entire life preparing for Open Secret, and overcame a stroke to get his work into print. He talks to The Idler about George Cukor, Gore Vidal, David Hockney, Chistopher Isherwood, David Geffen, Arthur Laurents, Abe Polonksy, Fraiser, Seinfeld, Friends, Ellen, The New York Times -- and why Tom Cruise's lawyers sent him threatening letters...

Although still struggling with the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, Japan may be down, but don't count it out. A Council on Foreign Relations Scholar believes it may well be the political, economic, and military "Comeback Kid" of the Far East...

Tom Wolfe says, "James Cooper makes a ringing call for America's twenty-first-century knights of the brush to recapture the high ground once commanded by the Hudson River School." In Chapter Sixteen, Cooper explains what American aesthetic renewal might look like...

What's more interactive than an e-book, the internet or the World Wide Web? Perhaps the printed word, published in a bound volume. Fail Safe author Harvey Wheeler explores an apparent paradox...

In her newest poems for The Idler, Kim Orr explores the possibilities for civic life represented by her friends...

As the Democrats and Republicans plan their conventions, The Idler's coverage of Election 2000 presents an in-depth analysis of a much-neglected issue that might just mobilize voters this fall...

A scholarly book on Mediterranean politics suggests that the future of Southern Europe may well illustrate the saying, "What's past is prologue..."

Every week in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, Golden Oldies station WBIG reminds listeners of the sometimes forgotten history of Rock 'n Roll -- on a late-night show called "Night Train"...

America's "oldest living enfant terrible" will be heading Australia's Adelaide Festival. Has deportation to the Antipodes been the sad fate of a misunderstood MacArthur "genius," or is some other principle at work?

What does Camp David II portend? An advisor to three Secretaries of State explains the promise and peril of the Middle East peace process...

In a new manifesto,the author of Fail Safe sets forth how computers and advanced information technology must transform society, pedagogy, and politics...

Malcolm Gladwell's new book is frightening, writes Milton Goldin in this review, because he reminds us how easily Adolf Hitler could come to power...

Chapter Seven of Charlie Clark's cult classic e-novel about coming-of-age in the 1960s, recently profiled in Congressional Quarterly...
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

Poet Diane Furtney reveals extraordinary dimensions to ordinary existence, in a selection of her verse chosen for The Idler...

Alice Goldfarb Marquis reviews her pick for best beach book of the summer, and it's a 800-page-plus doozy of a multi-generational saga...

Last month, we interviewed M.J. Rose about her novel's migration from self-published e-book to hardcover from a New York publisher. Now that LIP SERVICE is available in paperback, The Idler decided the time had come to publish an excerpt... Also of interest: THE MEANING OF E-PUBLISHING: An Interview With M.J. Rose The Idler, v.II, n.43, 19 June 2000

As a junior professor who had written a pamphlet defending Owen Lattimore's scholarship, Harvey Wheeler met with I.F. Stone in a personal confrontation with McCarthyism...

Chapter Six of Charlie Clark's cult classic e-novel about coming-of-age in the 1960s, as profiled in Wired ...
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

Anyone who expects to be a writer now expects to attend a writers' workshop. Yet this expectation is entirely new to the history of literature -- and very few people know how it came about. "The Elephants Teach" tells how...

Sidney Poitier is careful to hold back something of himself in his new "Spiritual Autobiography," but Jefferson D. Dunbar, Jr. argues that the movie star clearly portrays the greatest influence in his life -- his mother...

What does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have in common with the public relations efforts of philanthropists in the past? Milton Goldin investigates...

E-novelist and Wirednews.com reporter M.J. Rose tells The Idler that electronic publishing may make revolutionary changes in the book business -- or, maybe not...

Andrew Cline explains why North Carolina's Museum of Art is a success -- and why the state's Museum of History is anything but...

Harvey Wheeler analyzes American Beauty and explains the meaning of its portrayal of a dysfunctional American family...

The Idler sits down to talk with the author of YELTSIN: A Revolutionary Life about why he thinks the first-ever former Russian President will go down in history as a great liberator, alongside Charles De Gaulle and Abraham Lincoln.

Chapter Five of Charlie Clark's startling novel about coming-of-age in the 1960s...
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

Read Wired's profile of author Charlie Clark.

In a provocative essay, James Kurth argues that globalization is not just about markets, money, or power, but instead concerned with spreading a post-modern Protestant faith throughout the world...

The author of Art Lessons, The Art Biz, and a biography of Museum of Modern Art founder Alfred Barr reviews Jane Alexander's new memoir of life as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics...

Robert Maynard Hutchins may have had a reverence for the Great Books, but he also had a playful attitude, as those who delayed delivery of his martini would discover...

In the aftermath of a savage battle in Vietnam, a wounded G.I. recuperates -- and thinks of home...

The co-author of Fail-Safe, recently broadcast by CBS starring George Clooney, argues his story is more relevant than ever in the Post-Cold War era, and shares the behind-the-scenes story of how his book came to the screen for the first time in 1962, despite objections from the Defense Department -- and a lawsuit from Stanley Kubrick...

In this excerpt from his new biography -- called a "godsend" by the New York Times Book Review -- Leon Aron describes the early years of Russia's first democratically-elected President...

Painter Carolina Agravante Reyes interprets Boston's industrial landscape and herself in two works, in two sizes, in two different media...

What's in a name? Charlie Clark explains that in Washington, DC, the Capital answer is sometimes everything--or nothing at all...

Marc Fumaroli explains the vital nature of the recurring quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns, the dangers of the Enlightenment, the perils of globalization, and suggests Proust, Malraux, Camus, and Sartre have been overrated...

The funeral of a psychotherapist causes emotional trauma for one of his patients in this short story by New York author, actress, and radio personality Janet Coleman...

Marcel Duchamp's public image is of an ideal artist in opposition to conventional mores, but as Alice Goldfarb Marquis discovers, his actual approach to art was rather like Spin City...

As a young ballet student, Kim Orr had no idea that her dance partner during rehearsal would be "hearthrob of the world" Mikhail Baryshnikov...

The plot thickens in Chapter Four of this original and compelling novel...
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One

As newspaper headlines and television news reported the Elian Gonzalez story, news came that a group of mothers who had held daily prayer vigils at the boy's home in Miami were descending on the White House. The Idler went to take a look and see what was happening...

Human cloning might already be taking place in the United Kingdom, to judge from what is happening with Britain's New Labour...

As National Poetry Month draws to a close, The Idler presents two meditations from a Southern perspective...

The recent conclusion of the libel trial of David Irving v. Deborah Lipstadt is a reminder of the importance of a free press. The Idler interviews the author who has finally (after over 250 years) dramatized the dramatic libel trial of John Peter Zenger that gave America its freedom of the press...

When the Dow Jones plunged 600 points last Friday, it was time for BBC North American Business Correspondent Richard Quest to tell audiences in 150 countries around the world what it meant for them...

As newspaper headlines and television news reported downtown Washington, D.C. under seige by anti-global protesters, The Idler went to take a look and see what was happening...

Veteran Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent Stanley Meisler explains how Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao Museum relates to a long history of Basque separatism and terror...

The Idler inaugurates publication of poetry with a selection of four works from Kim Orr, who lives in a swamp somewhere in Lousiana...

The Idler talks with British Composer Frederick Stocken about the controversy over his Symphony for the Millennium, recently performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Albert Hall...

Alice Goldfarb Marquis recounts her struggle to come up with a list of the 100 most significant independent scholars...

The third chapter of Charlie Clark's remembrance of things past...
Chapter One
Chapter Two

The Idler's newest feature, "E-mail From London," begins with our correspondent's chilling tale of apprehension by the authorities for the crime of operating his television set without a license...

He arrived at his lavish coming-out party with a stellar panel of columnists, but Salon's David Talbot has a lot in common with Jimmy Stewart...

The revival of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon For The Misbegotten on Broadway sheds new light on the author's struggle with alcoholism. "Nothing he wrote was more terrible than what he endured at the end..."

How did PBS bring the Athens of 2,500 years ago vividly to life? By staying true to the spirit of Homer and Thucydides, as well as the BBC and Walt Disney...

The second chapter in Charlie Clark's coming-of-age novel. Click here to read Chapter One.

The death of Patrick O'Brian was as mysterious as his life. In his new biography, Dean King penetrates the veil of secrecy surrounding the author of the 20-book seafaring saga that began with Master And Commander...

In 1996, Jeff Jacoby argued why it was a good idea for South Carolina to lower the Stars and Bars at the State Capitol--then and now...

Television's low-key host Brian Lamb's all-talk network revives the civic spirit of Ancient Athens in America today...

Chopin's life and loves are the focus of a 1945 Hollywood film which has lessons to teach those who love art and music today...

Cuban-American filmmaker, writer, and artist Agustín Blazquez reflects on the significance of the new wave of cultural exchanges with Cuba, and wonders about their implications for Cuban artists...