Stefan Kanfer [91 titles]

1. TCM’S Sweet Sixteenth
   Not everything Ted Turner has created is ridiculous.
   1 July 2010
2. Exile in Dogpatch
   The curious neglect of cartoonist Al Capp
   Spring 2010
3. The Mathemagician
   Martin Gardner, R.I.P.
   27 May 2010
4. Festival of Contradictions
   A magisterial new biography of press lord Henry Luce
   14 May 2010
5. Matters of Life and Death
   Two fathers’ memoirs show that grief has no political affiliation.
   19 February 2010
6. All That Jazz
   Terry Teachout’s luminous biography captures the “sunlit, hopeful art” of Louis Armstrong.
   22 December 2009
7. Memo to the Führer
   A report on Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds
   25 August 2009
8. Booms and Busts
   New York has been down this road before—colorfully, memorably, and temporarily.
   28 July 2009
9. Autism, Non-Hollywood Version
   Karl Greenfeld’s painful, eloquent memoir lays bare the disease’s toll.
   26 June 2009
10. Richard Pryor: Stand-Up Philosopher
    The great American comic satirized white racism, his fellow blacks, and himself.
    Spring 2009
11. Another for the Stuffed Owl
    Elizabeth Alexander manages to compose history’s worst inaugural poem.
    21 January 2009
12. Notes on the Election
    City Journal writers reflect on Tuesday’s results and on the implications of an Obama presidency.
    7 November 2008
13. The Nimble Tread of the Feet of Fred
    Joseph Epstein’s biography examines the Astaire magic.
    31 October 2008
14. Self-Murder Mystery
    Christopher Lukas’s harrowing memoir describes a family heritage of destruction.
    26 September 2008
15. In Living Black-and-White
    The old classics retain a vitality and beauty that color can’t provide.
    Summer 2008
16. For Whom the Joke Tolls
    Jim Holt’s compendium collects some pretty good ones.
    25 June 2008
17. May 1968: 40 Years Later
    Six City Journal authors recall a spring that shook the world.
    Spring 2008
18. Pyrrhic Victory
    A new comic-book history chronicles a war between good taste and free expression.
    2 May 2008
19. Larger Than Life
    Richard Widmark and Charlton Heston, R. I. P.
    10 April 2008
20. History for Losers
    Nicholson Baker’s objectively fascist new book doesn’t even rise to the level of polemic.
    14 March 2008
21. The Last Word on Broadway
    The stagehands’ strike is about protecting featherbedding.
    26 November 2007
22. Working for Peanuts
    For Charles M. Schulz, art imitated life.
    2 November 2007
23. British Broadcast Cowardice
    The BBC’s sad decline
    10 September 2007
24. Love and Glory in East Aurory
    Elbert Hubbard, an American original
    Spring 2007
25. Four Stars for 24
    TV’s hottest thriller returns, as politically incorrect as ever.
    23 January 2007
26. The Big Lie, Clothbound
    Jimmy Carter’s lame legacy gets lamer.
    Winter 2007
27. The Dynamo and the Jeweler
    The Gershwins’ easy American elegance
    Autumn 2006
28. Warrior Princess
    Oriana Fallaci understood the threat that the West faces.
    Autumn 2006
29. Soccer Louts
    And the European culture that nurtures them
    Summer 2006
30. Hollywood Gets It Wrong. Again.
    Will self-congratulatory celebrities ever shut up?
    11 April 2006
31. Wrong Instinct
    The viewers made it bomb?
    5 April 2006
32. Gotham’s Very Own Muslim Firebrand
    Why should taxpayers be subsidizing Islamist hatred in city jails?
    16 March 2006
33. Jew Tortured, Times Fiddles
    Paper puts peaceful imam on page one.
    7 March 2006
34. Fieldston Follies
    A tony private school’s PC attitudes go too far for even liberal parents.
    17 February 2006
35. Spielberg’s Mendacious Munich
    The film can’t distinguish justice from revenge.
    10 January 2006
36. Barbra’s Dictionary
    What’s a lefty celebrity to do?!
    3 January 2006
37. France vs. France
    France’s Muslim problem will only get worse.
    Winter 2006
38. Peacenik Warmongers
    Antiwar demonstrators keep ugly company.
    Autumn 2005
39. Poshlost at Ground Zero
    Governor Pataki was right to kill the PC International Freedom Center.
    Autumn 2005
40. What Ails the Dems?
    Anger is not a program.
    Summer 2005
41. The Columbian Cartel
    An ugly tradition continues at Columbia University.
    Spring 2005
42. Vaudeville’s Brief, Shining Moment
    It was the most democratic popular art in American history. To get onstage, all you needed was chutzpah and moxie. If you had the right stuff, you picked up the dance steps, the vocal style, the comic timing that could make you a star—maybe even one of the Marx Brothers. No wonder their mother, Mimi, loved vaudeville.
    Spring 2005
43. Play Balco!
    The corruption of the Summer Game
    Winter 2005
44. Rather Not
    The end of an era
    Autumn 2004
45. Sondheim vs. Sondheim
    Only a handful of major Broadway composers have written lyrics to accompany their own melodies: Irving Berlin, Noel Coward, Jerry Herman, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim. Of that extraordinary group, Sondheim enjoys the highest critical status.
    Autumn 2004
46. Yuck!
    New York pols get down and dirty.
    Summer 2004
47. The Czarinas of Beauty
    The founders of the beauty business were three self-styled czarinas who built their castles in New York City. Here, each professed to be very different from (and, of course, far superior to) her rivals. Actually, they bore such an extraordinary resemblance to one another that they might have emerged from a modern gothic novel, concocted by a singularly imaginative author.
    Summer 2004
48. Just the Highlights
    This is technological progress?
    Summer 2004
49. Christo-mania
    Christo puts one over on Gotham.
    Summer 2004
50. The Yiddish Theater’s Triumph
    On a pleasant June evening in 1906, Manhattan’s original odd couple strolled down Second Avenue. The tall man with black beard and dark, deep-set eyes was playwright Jacob Gordin, the Yiddish theater’s first great realist and a dominant presence on the Lower East Side. Speaking with big gestures, the Russian immigrant went on about socialism, his eight children, his adaptations of Shakespeare, his interpretations of Tolstoy’s thought.
    Spring 2004
51. The Use of Dr. Seuss
    The creator of The Cat in the Hat turns 100.
    Spring 2004
52. Britzophrenia
    England’s two faces.
    Winter 2004
53. Britzophrenia
    Contemporary England’s two faces.
    11 December 2003
54. See-No-Evil Journalists
    One honest reporter tells the truth about his colleagues in Iraq.
    Autumn 2003
55. Richard Rodgers: Enigma Variations
    Based on current performances and record sales, the world’s most popular songs aren’t those of Schubert or Schumann, John Lennon or the latest hip-hop artist. They come courtesy of a gentleman of formal manner and formidable talent who took Broadway by storm more than half a century ago.
    Autumn 2003
56. The Clintonistas Return!
    As usual, with spin, not truth
    18 June 2003
57. Now That’s Popular Culture!
    By a sad coincidence, three preeminent American illustrators died recently. Even though they worked in the ephemeral media of journalism and film, the members of this trio commanded a draftsmanship far superior to many of their more 'serious' colleagues, and they put their vivid, original, and indelible stamp upon the American imagination, earning an honored place in our popular culture's pantheon. Hence this retrospective.
    Spring 2003
58. Gun Crazy
    There are gun nuts—and gun nuts.
    Spring 2003
59. The Voodoo That He Did So Well
    When Groucho Marx wondered if a joke was too sophisticated, he would ask his brothers, “What’ll this mean to the barber in Peru?” The comedian wasn’t referring to the South American nation: he meant Peru, Indiana—his notion of Hick Town, U.S.A. But that Peru turned out to be a most inappropriate choice. Unbeknownst to Groucho, it was the birthplace of New York City’s most urbane resident: Cole Albert Porter.
    Winter 2003
60. Hollywood Follies
    Brave actors oppose a war with Iraq!
    31 December 2002
61. Springtime for Schröder and Germany
    The international relations follies of 2002!
    Autumn 2002
62. Berserkeley!
    Since 9/11, the wackiest U.S. municipality has gone into outer space.
    Autumn 2002
63. Peace at any Prize
    Dictator-coddling ex-president Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize puts him in the company he deserves.
    17 October 2002
64. Springtime for Schröder and Germany
    The International Relations Follies of 2002!
    24 September 2002
65. Sontagism
    The queen of knee-jerk anti-Americanism strikes again.
    7 August 2002
66. America’s Dumbest Intellectual
    Walk onto the popular-music floor of Virgin Records in midtown Manhattan, and you encounter, as you’d expect, kids with shoulder tattoos and pierced body parts, wandering through rows of the latest hip-hop, altrock, and heavy-metal CDs as heavily amplified beats thunder.
    Summer 2002
67. Expurgated Exams
    The New York Board of Regents pushes PC to its absurd outer reaches.
    Summer 2002
68. The Israel-Bashing Media
    Here’s the newest bias of the mainstream press.
    26 April 2002
69. How to Trivialize the Holocaust
    The Jewish Museum’s “Mirroring Evil” is the most offensive show in town.
    3 April 2002
70. The Americanization of Irving Berlin
    It is supremely fitting that “God Bless America”—that stirring hymn to patriotism—has become our unofficial anthem in the aftermath of September 11, since the life of the legendary New York songsmith who penned it, Irving Berlin, born one Israel Baline in 1888 in distant Siberia, epitomizes everything about America’s indomitable civilization that our terrorist enemies despise: its openness to striving and talent, its freedom, its inexhaustible optimism and creativity.
    Spring 2002
71. How to Trivialize the Holocaust
    The Jewish Museum’s “Mirroring Evil” is the most offensive show in town.
    Spring 2002
72. Fox Has Morals?
    Viewers know that fairness doesn’t mean equivalence between good and evil.
    Winter 2002
73. Why the Scouts Ban Homosexuals
    A New York scoutmaster’s indictment explains everything.
    Winter 2002
74. The Consolations of History
    New York City is no stranger to monstrous incinerations. Some examples come immediately to mind, because they took place in the vicinity of what would become the World Trade Center.
    Autumn 2001
75. The Scout Wars
    In the latest round, the Boy Scouts do okay.
    Summer 2001
76. A Modest Proposal
    The Army of One embraces self-esteem.
    Spring 2001
77. A Little Touch of Mozart in New York
    Amid the braying of car alarms, the thud of radio rap, the squeal and grinding of garbage trucks, New York's stony canyons and grimy streets seem a universe away from the magic and moonlight of Mozart's operas.
    Spring 2001
78. Defending the Indefensible
    The ACLU goes haywire over Man/Boy Love.
    Autumn 2000
79. Elementary Con Job
    The latest literary lion’s answer to the nihilism of the sixties: Vive le nihilisme!
    Autumn 2000
80. Horatio Alger: The Moral of the Story
    Horatio Alger Jr. was the biggest American media star of his day.
    Autumn 2000
81. The New Blacklist
    Opponents of Dr. Laura’s defense of traditional morality conjure up an ugly specter.
    Summer 2000
82. Good Literature Lives!
    'If you build it, they will come,' predicts the haunting off-screen voice in Field of Dreams.
    Spring 2000
83. The Post Office Stamps Out the 1980s
    A new series of stamps commemorating the 1980s celebrates the trivial.
    Spring 2000
84. Coke Does Right
    A big corporation finally says, "Enough," and refuses to sponsor cultural trash.
    Winter 2000
85. The Dung Hits the Fan
    In Huckleberry Finn, the King and the Duke decide to stage a semi-pornographic show.
    Autumn 1999
86. It’s Their Money
    National Endowment for the Arts boosters regard Jesse Helms as the godfather of anti-intellectualism.
    Summer 1999
87. And on the Right, Charles Dickens!
    The left has always claimed Charles Dickens as one of its own.
    Winter 1999
88. The Newest American Credo
    In 1920, H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, two journalist-critics with little patience for fools, published a list they called The American Credo, which Nathan enlarged in 1927 as The New American Credo.
    Spring 1998
89. Time Heals All Wounds
    It seemed like a good idea. For a magazine to reach the age of 75 is close to miraculous. So when Time announced that it was throwing itself a party, playing host to as many of its past cover subjects as possible, readers made ready to raise a glass.
    Spring 1998
90. Isaac Singer’s Promised City
    'The ultimate New Yorker': in the last several years I have seen that description applied to Leonard Bernstein, Rudolph Giuliani, and--in a critique denouncing his latest excesses--Donald Trump.
    Summer 1997
91. Time Bombs
    Literacy can be a tricky business. Sometimes it pays to know what's not on the printed page.
    Autumn 1995

The Voodoo That They Did So Well: The Wizards Who Invented the New York Stage
by Stefan Kanfer