Archive for 2008

Historian Gordon Wood looks ahead at the 2008 campaign by looking back at 50 years of racial change: and by valuing Barack Obama\'s Lincolnian virtues: prudence, caution and grasp of tragedy.

Pianist Andrew Rangell reflects from the keyboard on \"the intersection of Man and God\" in J. S. Bach\'s Well-Tempered Clavier.

John Maeda, president of Rhode Island School of Design, looks at the Soviet poster show and sees issues of today: creativity and bondage, the imagery of persuasion and bullying.

Those famous Soviet propaganda posters look different now, as historian Tom Gleason points out, after the fall of Communism and the stumble of American capitalism.

Andrew Bacevich, the rueful ex-Colonel and empire enthusiast, spells out \"The Limits of Power\" learned in the Bush years.

Cardiologist Bernard Lown wrote a \"Prescription for Survival\" by rallying the medical profession against nuclear weaponry. Twenty years later he talks of an unusual campaign that turned both the White House and the Kremlin.

The film-makers behind \"Virtual JFK\" make three key points: 1) presidents decide war and peace; 2) their temperaments are decisive; and 3) President Kennedy would have ended the war in Vietnam in 1965.

Anna Deavere Smith, actress and on-stage documentarian, is looking for grace in chaos and suffering -- and finding it.

American pop culture \"out there\": Martha Bayles went listening to what the world hears