It's probably been said before: The Lower East Side is both a location and a state of mind. At least it used to be. Before the developers arrived. Before the la-di-da gentrification of the real estate boom. Before the boutiques.

The unusual title -- "Motherfuckers: The Auschwitz of Oz" -- tells you it's an extraordinary novel. But it still doesn't prepare you for the story (or the swastika on the cover). Which is why "Horror Panegyric," published today by Savoy Books, works...

The 79-year-old graphic designer perhaps most famous for...

After so many years of fear and loathing, we had almost forgotten what it's like to feel good about our country. On Thursday night, that long-dormant emotion came rushing back, like an old dream that pops out of the deepest recesses of...

Here's a tale you won't find in Students for a Democratic Society, A Graphic History, a new book due out soon. I always meant to write it down but never did. I'm telling it now before I forget all the details, because I don't think...

Who knew? I didn't. But that's what Tom Hayden reveals, give or take a few...

Hi Jan -- I just wanted to introduce myself, having followed your blog with great interest. My name is Sonia Katyal, and I am a law professor who specializes in the area of art, law and technology...

I have no idea how many readers wrote to tell them. But I know of at least one. This was my email message to The New York Times Book Review:

It is a delicious irony of life in New York to ride the subway during the morning rush hour with Dave Frishberg's "Quality Time" playing on your iPod (listen here). Another irony, not so delish, is to miss what's in front of your eyes. Like walking past the art...

I see that in two New York art shows Jenny Holzer and the rest have taken some kind of lesson from the Aztecs. "Death hangs in the air," NY Times art critic Roberta Smith writes. "Or, more accurately, on the walls."

But to be frank about it, the...

The posthumous show of collages by Mary Beach and Claude Pelieu -- now at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller through Oct. 13 on Manhattan's Upper East Side -- comes as something of a surprise. Their work is not high on the list of swank art collectors. Hell, I'd be...

You can't say the mainstream media is not telling us. Even though it uses the antiseptic term "internal displacement," a New York Times news analysis about yesterday's dog-and-pony show notes that massive ethnic cleansing in Baghdad has soared during the surge:

[M]any Iraqis have told reporters they still...

Who's the bigger jerk, Ron Rosenbaum or Stanley Fish?

Rosenbaum writes in Slate that Fish's NYT column "in its self-satisfied cluelessness may just qualify as the worst op-ed ever written." I can think of worse op-eds, but never mind. What's more important to note is that Rosenbaum takes...

The U.S. military can't find 190,000 weapons given willy-nilly to Iraqi forces when security training was run by Gen. David Petraeus, raising fears, as The Washington Post delicately puts it, that the military genius who is now the top U.S. commander in Iraq has armed the insurgents fighting U.S....

Is Rupert Murdoch good or bad for The Wall Street Journal? That's the burning question. Today's WSJ editorial assures us, "No sane businessman pays a premium of 67% over the market price for an asset he intends to ruin." Well, nobody has said he intends to ruin it. To...