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At least that’s what Sony’s movie website says once you click through to it. Judging from the proliferation of websites and other promotional vehicles saturating the internet and television with DaVinciana, its probably more accurate to say that Sony is loaded, or will be by the time the cash registers stop ringing. Bookstores are cashing […]
by Don Ritchie It is richly ironic that during the same week the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting was awarded to Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi, and R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post, for their coverage of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, news reports also revealed that the FBI has been seeking to comb […]
Roger Gottlieb, author of A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future, was interviewed by The American Prospect this week. Gottlieb argues that in recent years religious groups have begun to recognize the moral obbligation of preserving God’s creation and taken up a host of environmental causes. How do you respond (or how would […]
by David Brion Davis I’m concerned with the erosion of interest in history — the view expressed by even some leading teachers and intellectuals that we should “let bygones be bygones,” “free” ourselves from the boring and oppressive past, and concentrate on a fresh and better future. I’m passionately committed to the cause that distinguishes […]
The shape of the word weather has changed little since it was first attested in the year 795. In Old English, it had d in place of th; the rest, if we ignore its present day spelling with ea, is the same. But its range of application has narrowed down to “condition of the atmosphere,” while at that time it also meant “air; sky; breeze; storm.”
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor […]
Updating yesterday’s announcement that David Oshinsky won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in history for Polio: An American Story, here is today’s NYTimes piece on the “Letters, Drama and Music” winners: HISTORY: ‘Polio: An American Story,’ by David M. Oshinsky Mr. Oshinsky, 61, is George Littlefield professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. […]
The Pulitzer Prizes for 2006 were just announced and Oxford has won its second straight Letters and Drama Prize for History! Congratulations to this year’s winner, David Oshinsky, author of Polio: An American Story!
The pure products of America go crazy– mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names and promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure– and young slatterns, bathed in filth […]
This Friday on Serial Blogging, we’re proud to present the finale of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
It really wasn’t cool to keep this from you. Sorry! Erin McKean, Editor-in-Chief of Oxford’s American Dictionary program and one of our favorite people, is blogging this week at Powells.com. Read Erin’s posts HERE! P.S. – Powell’s is this blog’s newest partner – check out the new 7.5% discount for OUP Blog readers! We promise […]
Eviatar Zerubavel has been writing for years about the hidden, and often unquestioned, patterns in everyday life, like the seven day week and collective memory. In his latest book Elephant in the Room: The Social Organization of Silence and Denial he tackles the “conspiracies of silence” that lead to “open secrets” among families, companies and […]
By Anatoly Liberman
Those who look up the origin of a word in a dictionary are rarely interested in the sources of the information they find there. Nor do they realize how debatable most of this information is. Yet serious research stands behind even the controversial statements in a modern etymological dictionary.
This week in Serial Blogging – part five of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
by Anatoly Liberman Once out of school, we stop noticing the vagaries of English spelling and resign ourselves to the fact that rite, right, Wright (or wright in playwright), and write are homophones without being homographs. In most cases such words sounded different in the past, then changed their pronunciation, but retained their spelling. Such […]
by Barbara Novak The Whitney Biennial has been notably challenged lately for including European artists in a show at a Museum of American Art. But such critiques misunderstand the nature of the question “What is American in American Art?” “American” is not a nationally distilled “ingredient” injected into our art by virtue of birth or […]