Prague Spring

Tracking Vaclav Havel: From Orwell To Vermont And Into Prague

Lucas Kavner | Posted 02.18.2012

Read More: Communism, Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel, The Memorandum, Prague Spring, Middlebury College, Czech Republic, Democracy, Why Orwell Matters, Prague, Forum 2000, George Orwell, Hitchens Orwell, Culture News
Lucas Kavner

This past week we lost a writer and a major intellectual, and we lost a brutal, confounding dictator. We also lost a playwright, a rebel, a rockstar, a chain-smoker, a renowned artist, a non-profit leader, and one of the most beloved presidents in history.

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Thinking About War and Peace

Norman MacAfee | Posted 06.13.2011

Read More: Anna Netrebko, King Vidor, Hitler, Napoleon, War and Peace, Turin, Natasha, Sergei Prokofiev, Valery Gergiev, Norman Rose, Richard Pevear, Rostovs, Metropolitan Opera, Sergei Bondarchuk, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, NBC Opera Theatre, Bulgarian State Opera, Vilcek Foundation, Bolshoi Opera, Kiev, Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Nino Rota, Larissa Volokhonsky, Tolstoy, General Kutuzov, Prague Spring, Andrei Bolkonsky, Moscow, D. W. Griffith, The Crowd, Pierre Bezuhov, Mikhail Gorbachev, Constance Garnett, The Big Parade, Arts News
Norman MacAfee

When I first saw Bondarchuk's "War and Peace," in 1968, in New York, it was presented in two parts and ran six hours. You went in the afternoon, broke for dinner, then came back for the rest. It was stupendous.

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