It's well known that in France, wine is an art. But the story of Beaujolais Nouveau turned one wine, some 30 years ago, into a global sport. Le Beaujolais Nouveau est Arrivé! is a familiar proclamation this time of year, painted across the windows of wine shops and cafes in...

"You can't be neutral on a moving train." Howard Zinn said it, and George Orwell would have agreed.

In 1946, Orwell wrote in the essay, "Why I Write": "In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware...

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a non-partisan organization committed to honoring our veterans by protecting their interests, gave Republican Congressman Rob Wittman a "D" grade in their Congressional report card. If I got a "D" in school, my parent's would have had my hide. (I know the...

Three months after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, a group of abolitionists in Manhattan founded The Nation, a magazine "to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred." It sounds like they too had a...

There's a touching moment in the French classic film Amélie where the heroine, as a little girl, reflects the sunlight off her mirror from her window overlooking Paris, hoping someone out there sees her light. From a window across the city, another lonely child--the boy who will grow up to...

This week in the East Village is the third annual Kinofest NYC, a chance to discover independent films from Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries. With a win at the Cannes Film Festival last year for Ukrainian director Maryna Vroda, for her short film Cross Country, and a production...

Innovation is a dirty word. Everyone wants to be innovative. But wanting and doing are two different things. George Lois, the Orwell of design, has been bridging that gap for decades, most notably as the ad man brought in to save Esquire and a nascent (and artistic) MTV.

Long...

When my friend and I met up last week to go to Occupy Wall Street, I wore my long flowing pin stripe skirt, a black-and-white vintage blouse, and a nude pair of shiny ballet flats. After the police brutality at the start of the occupation, dressing chic seemed both a...

At the height of the Vietnam War, Robert Altman's M.A.S.H. ignored that war is hell, lampooned office politics and celebrated camaraderie. Since the Iraq War has yet to receive the definitive dark comedy treatment, The Birthday Boys, the latest play to open off-Broadway, at the Access Theater, if adapted for...

Since 2001, 1,622 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan, and since 2003, 4462 have died in Iraq, according to iCasualties, a website that tracks the latest Defense Department data. In the decade we have been at war, tens of thousands -- nearly 44,000 American men and women...

John Kerry took the stage last night at the New York Restoration Project's annual Hulaween Ball at the Waldorf Astoria dressed in a gray suit and tie. Addressing the at-capacity charity gala, a literally sparkling crowd decadent with intense costumes--from a fleet of giant flag waving Chilean miners...

George Lois, advertising giant whose agency, Papert Koenig Lois, produced a decade of fearless magazine covers for Esquire during the turbulent '60s that are on permanent collection in the MoMA, deserves a homage character in Matthew Weiner's Mad Men so he can silly slap Don Draper. 1962: The fictional Draper...

"If George W. Bush can run for President, so can I," came the initial shrugged sentiment in the camp of a pragmatic, plain-spoken governor of Vermont who ignited a movement that would go on to elect the first African-American President to the White House. Ari Berman does a wonderful thing...

It was an election so electrifying it seemed to unite the country more than divide it, turning the busiest of people and pop stars into volunteers, working for a reform-minded politician who stood for healing, unity, and greater liberalization. It had catchy songs and iconic fashion statements, and just like...

The BP oil spill has nothing on the hundreds of miles of garbage floating in the Atlantic Ocean, and its bigger sibling, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a plastic-soup in the Pacific Ocean estimated to span the size of the continental U.S. Our oceans are our...

JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater gave us a meme we couldn't get enough of. Now that the jokes have been exhausted, it's time to focus on an issue in the shadows of his fabulous escape: caregiver stress.

Susan Balda in eCareDiary writes in response to the

I love HBO's True Blood, the sexy, often hilarious (the battle-hardened and still swanky Lafayette deserves a spin-off) drama based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries, the serialized novels by Charlaine Harris, set in rural Louisiana. Every Sunday my friends come over, and I cook dinner, usually something southern or French,...

Lots of exciting things coming out of the generous minds of the great Pacific Northwest. First, Urban Honking, a blogging community in Portland, Oregon that has been compared to "a chic Fendi handbag," has launched a $1,000 scholarship for an entering college freshman. "We're giving...

"Black Americans seem to think that their vision of race is the only one that matters. In Canada and England, they don't have our history and so they view race differently," says Nelson George, a cultural historian and filmmaker who candidly explores race, sex, parenting, gentrification, internet dating, the current...

Monday night, Caroline's in New York hosted FX's premier of "Louie," the Seinfeld-esque series by Louis C.K., that follows his life in New York, going through a divorce and raising two young daughters. The show relies on gag-riddled skits to show the awkwardness and abuse that comes with making this...