728 x 90



  • Mao: Worse Than Stalin and Hitler

    Mao: Worse Than Stalin and Hitler4

    American schoolchildren learn about Hitler and, possibly, Stalin, but few know much about Mao. And yet, while Hitler and Stalin were deplorable, Mao murdered far more people than either of his European counterparts—and his tactics have made their way to the United States. Mao Zedong was born in a rural village in 1893, but he

    READ MORE
  • Letting Shakespeare Be

    Letting Shakespeare Be1

    In a recent piece for the New York Times, Drew Lichtenberg, the artistic producer at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, laments the closing of the California Shakespeare Theater and the widespread decline in productions of Shakespeare across the country. The reasons, he suggests, have to do with many things, including the expense of mounting a

    READ MORE
  • The Therapeutic Power of Stories

    The Therapeutic Power of Stories2

    Stories hold a powerful sway over the human spirit. They reach us on the deepest levels, moving, inspiring, instructing, and even healing us, as modern therapeutic practice has shown. Stories and poems consolidate and interpret random occurrences and emotional and sensory activity—the raw inputs of experience—into a meaningful whole. This allows us to understand reality

    READ MORE
  • Lessons From the Zombie Genre

    Lessons From the Zombie Genre0

    Imagine a zombie. What does your zombie look like? How does it move? What does it eat? How does it spend its day? What if any hobbies does it have? More likely than not, you probably pictured a zombie of the George A. Romero variety: a slow-moving reanimated corpse that feasts on the flesh of

    READ MORE
  • How to Step Into a New Future

    How to Step Into a New Future1

    They say the road to success is made by walking. For kids, that is literally true. Turns out that the more kids walk around, the more upward mobility they enjoy as adults, concluded a study in American Psychologist. The researchers, led by Shigehiro Oishi, wondered why there are such “large regional differences in upward social

    READ MORE
  • Solzhenitsyn, Lysenkoism, and the Lies of the Revolution

    Solzhenitsyn, Lysenkoism, and the Lies of the Revolution3

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was the most important Soviet dissident, but his message was accessible to all. On the day before he was sent into exile in 1974, he published a short essay entitled “Live Not By Lies.” It only takes him a few pages to lay out the most effective strategy for resisting totalitarianism. As Solzhenitsyn

    READ MORE