A few years ago, Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children sparked a media firestorm by arguing that many women end up husband-less and childless—and by Read More
Carol Gilligan is one of the most influential feminist social theorists of her time. She’s also one of the least rigorous. Now she’s written a novel. It makes perfect sense: Why bother with real people whose experience may not conform to your theories when Read More
When New York’s first Starbucks opened in 1994, it wasn’t greeted with alarm, as phase one of an insidious plan to colonize the city. In that innocent era, Starbucks, with a mere 425 stores—compared to more than 14,000 Read More
You know those little turquoise boxes from Tiffany’s, the ones with a big white bow? Apparently, they are among the great icons of the world—up there, I suppose, with the pyramids, the Great Wall of China and the Eiffel Tower. At least, that’s what Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said at Wednesday's grand opening of the Read More
Specifically, the one that was officially unveiled to reporters Wednesday at a heavily guarded and extremely lavish press conference (picture red carpets; chandeliers large enough for Read More
Is a house a metaphor? Robert and Lee Dalzell would say so. In The House The Rockefellers Built, they argue that Kykuit, the mansion that Read More
Yet another memoir of a privileged young woman’s search for love in the big city. One dreads the tone of complaint: “How could this happen to me? I’m smart, successful and attractive—how can I be single?” The real question is how the Read More
Alison Rogers is a very likable person.
It’s a good thing, because her new book, Diary of a Real Estate Rookie, is only loosely about real Read More
Rick Moody’s fiction has always had a strong topical streak: He’s as concerned with particular aspects of contemporary American society—the barrenness of mass consumerism, say, or the tragically limited economic and aesthetic scope of the lower middle-class, or the dangers of nuclear power—as Read More
CONQUERING GOTHAM: A GILDED AGE EPIC: THE CONSTRUCTION OF PENN STATION AND ITS TUNNELSBy Jill JonnesViking Adult, 368 pages, $27.95
Most of us know how the story of the original Penn Station ends: The breathtakingly grand neoclassical structure—designed to be a suitably splendid entryway to the nation’s largest city—was razed by the cash-strapped Pennsylvania Railroad in Read More
For the record, I don’t care for shopping malls. Or Starbucks. In terms of my personal aesthetic preferences, I am with the contributors to The Suburbanization of New York, a new compilation of essays subtitled, “Is the World’s Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town?” But muddle-headed thinking is never so irritating as when it’s deployed Read More
