Recent films about the 1960s belong to one of the basic romantic genres: nostalgic retrospect. The great pioneer of this genre in English was the poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth gave us several luminous visions of his rural childhood and of …
We beg delinquents for our life. Behind each bush, perhaps, a knife; each landscaped crag, each flowering shrub, hides a policeman with his club. —Robert Lowell, “Central Park” …the block is burning down on one side of the street, and …
Karl Marx, writing in the 1840s, developed a perspective that can help us see why modern men and women have a special need for public space, and also why the historical forces that create this need make it especially hard …
Several years ago I began a study of modernity. I meant to explore both the history of ideas—such ideas as “modern times,” “modern society,” “the modern predicament,” and so on—and the human realities that these ideas were meant to grasp. …
