On July 1, 1961, a beautiful 17-year-old girl appeared on the cover of Paris Match, back then in its heyday: “C’est une deb,” announced the cover, the once-upon-a-time annual British ritual having passed ...

The world is filled with tough guys who say they are going to smash your face in but never throw a punch. Whether it's a barroom blowhard or Asia's Big Bluffer, few things irritate me more than a jackass who is long on ...

Which is the most infamous bite in history? Surely Adam’s, but the one Steve Rubell took off Halston’s leg was far more expensive. Let me explain for you whippersnappers who’ve probably never heard of these men. Both ...

I am an admirer of ratcatchers; in my experience, they respect their enemies and love their work. I have never met a bored ratcatcher, or one who gave the impression that he wished he was doing something else. They are ...

I hadn’t planned to buy the new authorized biography of novelist Philip Roth, author of Portnoy’s Complaint and American Pastoral, because I am at best a lazy admirer of Roth, having read only a handful of books by the ...

Back in the ’80s I worked comedy clubs, and, depending on the night, the venue, the crowd, and the level of alcohol consumption, you could sometimes get absolutely eviscerated by hecklers. One time I was working this club ...

“Passion. Purpose. Pride.” The three words were emblazoned on her black T-shirt. Rainbow-colored and printed in undulating font, the three-word tautogram hung below the less-flashy name of her employer, Sweetgreen. ...

We live, as perhaps we always have lived, in curious times. On the one hand, we have never been as sensitive to what people say as we are today; we have no emotional skins, as it were, but only emotional raw nerve endings, ...

There is a gesture that I have detested ever since an Albanian policeman made it in my direction about thirty years ago. He placed the palm of his right hand over his heart and made a slight bowing movement toward me. The ...

When I was young and writing history essays, I kept a store of useful quotations in my head, somebody else's words being a neat or at least easy way of kicking off. Likewise when I became a newspaper columnist. One that I ...

When I reached maturity, or at any rate stopped growing, I was of average height. Now I am below average height, the world having grown taller than I in the meantime. In the same way, I used to be averagely egocentric ...

Ancient primitives -- or as we now call them, "Indigenous people whose land we stole" -- believed in talismans, voodoo, rain dances and other versions of "A preceded B, so A caused B." Today, we consider such reasoning ...

GSTAAD—A heavy snowfall diverted some forty-odd private jets from landing in Saanen airport, thus the one percent of the one percent that came to Gstaad for a grand wedding last weekend used conventional travel methods. ...

This week, we'll look at two tweets that encapsulate everything that's wrong with the "white privilege" narrative consuming our nation. The Twitter account @nowthisnews posted a video of shutdown protesters yelling at ...

When James Eagan Holmes had been in custody for hours and the sun broke over the tragic scene of a mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the typical recriminations began. Surprisingly, both President Obama and candidate Romney ...

Warren Buffett is the outspoken ass of a generation. Perhaps that comes with being conservative in his demeanor yet liberal with other people’s money. But this extends well beyond Buffett’s constant caterwauling ...

UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) achieved its primary goal in June when Britain voted to leave the European Union. Its triumphant leader, Nigel Farage, resigned (though he remains a member of the European ...

Noam Chomsky's new book, Hopes and Prospects, leads me to a conclusion that will startle his admirers and critics alike: Chomsky is a conservative. It might surprise him as well. After all, he is a socialist and a ...

A Moment in Time reminded me of English women expatriates I had met in the South of France more than fifty years ago. They were very proud of being British, never tired of telling us they were British, were rather broke, ...

If any of you see Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, walking around with a begging bowl in his hand, it’s because he took me to dinner recently and I sort of went a bit nuts with the wine and the VF chief ended up ...

DALLAS—I started getting panicked messages around 8:30 Friday night. “Joe Bob, I can’t get in. I think my computer is fried.” “Joe Bob, WHAT THE HELL.” Emails, texts, instant messages, tweets. “Joe Bob, ...

The most blatant example of the Nazis"€™ perverse cooption of Christianity is the assigning of the role of Messiah to Hitler. In this blasphemy Hitler takes the place of Christ; the thousand year reign of the Third Reich ...

The first writer of supposedly classic status whom I ever read was W.W. Jacobs. He is not accorded that status now, and indeed is very largely forgotten (a warning to all writers complacent in their success). At about the ...

I have a confession to make: I enjoy reading New York Times columnist David Brooks. (Wait, don"€™t hit the "€œback"€ button on your browser yet! I have a good point to make.) The eggheadish token Tory of the Gray ...