Public Life

Reefer Sadness

Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence by alex berenson free press, 272 pages, $26 The smoking of marijuana, with its careful preparation of the elements and the solemn passing around of the shared joint, was the unholy communion of the counterculture . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2019

Immigration Idealism

by Matthew Schmitz

For much of my life, I believed in open borders. Aside from violent criminals, I could think of no person who had entered this country illegally or overstayed a visa who deserved to be sent away. But in fact, I had thought little about the matter. I simply meant well, and I knew that all . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2019

Made for Love

by R. R. Reno

In the early 1880s, Henry James set out to write “a very American tale.” The result was The Bostonians, serialized in a magazine in 1885 and then published in a single volume in 1886. The novel features activist meetings, conversations sprinkled with references to the cause of women’s . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2019

LGBT, Inc.

by Philip Jeffery

Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement by david k. johnson columbia, 328 pages, $32 How did the gay liberation movement, so radical in the Stonewall days, come to make peace with corporate America? Conventional wisdom has it that after Stonewall, corporate and consumerist . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2019

Comfort and the Peanut

by Shalom Carmy

Our founding fathers are rarely praised as fountains of mirth. As a child, I read and reread The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln until the book disintegrated. Can you imagine such a volume for Washington or any of his confreres? Benjamin Franklin is the exception. He is remembered as the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2019