Rush Limbaugh

Hushed Limbaugh

How did this nation ever get to the point where a man once considered nothing more than a tacky, loud, nouveau-riche liberal NYC real estate mogul/celebrity, with an orange complexion and a crazy pompadour/combover, would be transmogrified into the ultimate scapegoat for the failings, crimes, and corruption that have plagued our government and society since at least the end of the Second World War; the locus and symbol of the most unbridled hatred by the very same global elite that, in point of fact, are guilty of those sins and that he once perhaps was a part of? If I had to venture a guess, ...

Year-End Cleanup, Part I

I usually take it easy on myself for my Christmas and New Year’s pieces by penning less labor-intensive columns. In part because I love the season too much to get bogged down by ...

Ismet Inonu

Turkey, Eight Decades Later

Two days before flying to Turkey for a few days, I found a little book published in 1944 titled La Turquie d’Ismet Ineunu (The Turkey of Ismet Inonu). It was published by ...

It’s the Indians, Nikole

Back in 2019, the executive editor of The New York Times, Dean Baquet, reassured a restive newsroom that while, admittedly, the Times’ plan A to dump Trump—Russiagate—had ...

Edward Jay Epstein

Epstein’s Epic

Ever since his 1966 book Inquest documented that the Warren Commission’s own staffers believed that their enquiry into who shot JFK had been too rushed to be reliable, Edward ...

Great Shakes

I was going to write another heavy duty current events data analysis column, but then I got distracted and/or lazy, so this essay is going to wander off to a more fun topic. When ...

Scholars Rank Biggest Spending Presidents as the Greatest

Before President Joe Biden entered the White House, he consulted with several prominent historians about how to be a great commander in chief. Their answer: Grow government. ...

New York City

Bye-Bye, Bagel

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a property in the Swiss Alps is in no need of a house in New York City. With apologies to old Jane, I am ...

Generational Gobbledygook: Astrology for MBAs

As we are constantly lectured, race does not exist. Yet, almost nobody points out that the conventional wisdom that races are wholly arbitrary social constructs is actually far ...

2023’s First List of Openly Gay Transgender Nonwhite Accomplishments

This is the only "So Long, 2022!" column you need to read. I combed The New York Times' archives for all the pivotal moments. It turns out that 2022 was a MAJOR year for firsts. ...

Purge and Cleanse, No Loose Ends

It’s a tradition ’round these parts (and by “these parts” I mean my desktop, comfy chair, and rum bottle) to end December by cleaning house of interesting bits and pieces ...

Hugo Chávez

Chavez’s Successors

Some years ago, I vowed to catalog my books and tidy up my study before I died to make things a little easier for my executors. Among other things, this entailed throwing out the ...

The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries

The Dynamics of Repute

The rise and fall of fame—or at least of the number of times books mention the name of an artist or other historical figure—can be conveniently graphed using Google’s free ...

HRH Princess Elizabeth in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, 1945

She Gave Her Best

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of the House of Windsor was never supposed to have been Queen of Great Britain. Her uncle David, who had taken the name Edward for his reign, was very ...


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