Popular Culture
Moscow Nights
In 1958 the Cold War was at its height–or perhaps its depths. Think Sputnik, Krushchev’s overthrow of Stalin, backyard bomb shelters, and bomb drills in schools.* Not to mention Elvis Presley’s induction into the army–a Cold War weapon of a different kind. Culture was as much of a battlefield as space. In April, Soviet Russia…
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One Hundred Years and a Day
A hundred years ago yesterday, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act that created the National Park Service.* I’ve spent many happy hours at facilities run by the NPS. I look forward to spending many more. So I’d feel bad about sending the agency the equivalent of a belated birthday card, if it weren’t for the…
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Two Poets, Eight Centuries, One Poetic Masterpiece
Save Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is one of those books that some scholars love to be snotty about. Literary critics of a certain stamp dismiss it as bad poetry, apparently on the grounds that people love it who don’t otherwise read poetry.* Persian linguists rightly point out that Fitzgerald’s translation…
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