Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Renaissance Man

If you haven’t yet read the German Der Spiegel interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, go read it now. If it’s not enough to make you reconsider your summer vacation to Tehran this year, I don’t know what is. After speculating on whether or not he’ll attend the World Cup or watch it on TV … Read more

The Cat In The Hat, Twice Removed

I’ve never been a big fan of Cliffs Notes. Though the publisher calls their product “trustworthy study guides,” we all know what they’re used for 99 percent of the time. They encourage laziness, illiteracy, and all the other bad things your high school English teacher warned you about. There was one occasion, however, that I … Read more

On and Off the Shelf

Part of the trouble with reading six or seven books at a time is that some really good works get set aside as I “sneak a peek” at other volumes, which in turn get cast aside in favor of other titles, and so on — it’s quite the vicious cycle. Call it attention deficit disorder, … Read more

Downfall

Evil is most fearsome when it is encompassed in a person, and few persons throughout history have encompassed evil as well as Adolf Hitler. It is hard for most people to even conceive of someone like Hitler, but imagine trying to play him in a movie. When it comes to tyrants, most films go overboard … Read more

So Bad The Novel of Brown

It’s not often that a novel undergoes such scrutiny as has Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. Debunking the wildly popular thriller has become a virtual industry unto itself, and not without warrant. Brown’s fictional account of a “search for truth” was designed to push the buttons and step on the toes of the faithful. Controversy … Read more