Jesse Kornbluth

It's no one thing, just the drip drip drip of inaccuracies and misrepresentations, the hatred of the poor and the darkly pigmented, the lust to punish people who can't fight back.

This retro thinking and hateful speech pops up in surprising places -- even, I can attest,...

In 1999, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be "the father of modern psychiatry," interviewed 200 men and women who had undergone "conversion" therapy.

His conclusion: gay people could become straight.

Now, 11 years later, he's recanted and apologized. His study was flawed, he...

I don't lose books.

I lost this one.

A few years ago, I bought Chants of a Lifetime in Los Angeles, got on the plane, read a few chapters, put it aside and walked off the plane without it.

I realized right away...

As many as three thousand people used to attend the annual memorial for the four students who were killed and the nine who were wounded by National Guardsmen during an anti-war protest at Kent State University in 1970. There will be many fewer this year. Because classes are ending and...

After some of these days, I'd give a lot for a quick, mindless read.

James Patterson?

Nick Sparks?

Can't do it.

But every once in a while a book is pressed upon me and "page-turner" passes someone's lips. And once...

He's the one who sang "The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and "Up on Cripple Creek." He played Loretta Lynn's father in "Coal Miner's Daughter." He's in rock's Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone called him one of the hundred best singers of all time, but he...

I thought I was doing a dead writer and her friend a favor.

Some favor.

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl -- a psychoanalyst and biographer of Hannah Arendt and Anna Freud -- had, in an earlier incarnation as a professor of philosophy, been Dominique Browning's mentor at Wesleyan. They had become close, and...

A man walks down a street. He's doing nothing wrong. But someone thinks he looks wrong. And something bad happens.

Later, there's sorrow and commentary and maybe a clenched-teeth murmur of apology. But that's not the point. Prejudice is -- and the willingness for prejudice to percolate and become violence.

There was a "No Bullying School Zone" sign posted in front of Hamilton Middle School in Cypress, Texas, but the message apparently was only for the kids outside. Asher Brown's mother and stepfather say he was relentlessly bullied in class, and that they complained repeatedly, and that school officials did...

Children go hungry and I'm suggesting you buy an ounce of fennel pollen?

Guilty.

Let's be honest. It's not like many of us are going to be deciding between 1.3 ounces of fennel pollen (at $10, plus $6 shipping) and a gift to the food bank. Most of us can...

Rome. Easter Week. The year: 1639 or 1790, it's all the same. The Matins service at the Vatican. 3 AM. Twenty-seven candles are lit. One at a time, they're extinguished. One candle left. The Pope kneels before the altar and starts to pray. Music begins.

And what music! The words...

The New Yorker issue of September 26, 1970 contained a 70-page, 39,000-word excerpt from The Greening of America -- the longest book excerpt in its history.

A few weeks later, The Greening of America was the #1 nonfiction bestseller, dominating the New York Times list for 36 weeks. In hardcover...

Days before the opening of The Hunger Games, ticket pre-sales were so massive that more than 2,000 showings were sold out.

We seem to be looking at something more than a film -- a phenomenon.

We are definitely looking at the launch of a major actress -- Jennifer Lawrence.

If...

At almost the same time that the Republican candidates for President started competing to see who could be most demeaning to women, a novel appeared about a young woman who gives up her sexual autonomy to a bondage/S&M relationship.

Their fates could not be more different.

Ninety-eight...

You do not want the Satmars on your case.

I learned this the hard way the other week, when I reviewed Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, Deborah Feldman's account of growing up in this ultra-religious community.

I praised the book, and a bunch of...

Polls tell us 51% of Americans believe the bailout of the banks was wrong. An overwhelming majority --- 86% --- disapproves of big bonuses on Wall Street. And more than 50% feel that "the power and influence of banks and other financial institutions represent a major threat to the country."...

Sometimes you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelic zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

Hazel Lancaster says that in "The Fault in Our Stars," a novel that...

Decades ago, when I was reporting a story on New York sex clubs for Playboy, the proprietor of one club showed me a special door that provided Hasidic rebbes a discreet exit when their congregants showed up to be serviced.

I admire that foresight. "Below the belt, all men...

We all have a list of books/movies/music that make us nuts.

Based on what I heard, this book surely looked to be on mine.

Consider: One Monday on a New York street, Maurice Mazyck, an 11-year-old African American panhandler, asks Laura Schroff, a 35-year-old advertising executive for...

How do you access the important moments in your life?

Not the moments the world sees.

I mean the great personal moments, the ones that matter most.

I'm certain I'm not alone when I say that music has been a direct pathway to...