It’s hard to make a good movie. It’s even harder to make a good superhero movie, and Marvel Studios makes it look so easy. Through intelligence, wit, and sheer perseverance, not unlike their flagship character, they have become the gold standard in popular film entertainment. The Marvel movies stand above every other franchise, even the Star […]

Not long ago, I read the incredible book “Strangers in their Own Land,” by the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. She visited Louisiana and interviewed scads of people to ask them about their voting habits. Specifically, she wanted to find out why these decent and smart people continually voted against their own interests. If you lived […]

There’s an old expression* you’ve probably heard that says, “May you live in interesting times.” We have the misfortune to live in interesting times, particularly when several of the seemingly indestructible institutions of our society are crumbling before our eyes. One of those institutions is print journalism. After Woodward and Bernstein raked Nixon over the […]