ldquo Once a reasonable number of our germ cells have been given a chance to impart their DNA to the next generation rdquo U C L A biologist William R Clark reminds us ldquo our somatic cells become so much excess baggage They serve no useful function and they mdash we mdash must die so th

In 1998 just before he turned 50 Edward Gargan did what any normal Vietnam-era c o former Berkeley Ph D candidate in medieval Chinese history New York Times foreign correspondent and bureau chief West Africa India and Hong Kong and current Newsday Asia hand would do for a midlife sabbatical

Though the mostly unheralded centennial of Queen Victoria rsquo s death has now drawn to a close it is pleasant to see various aspects of her sprawling era still being hailed by two writers who differ as Victorian critics might have said toto caelo In a consistently engaging and spirited if som

Perhaps the least helpful statement in Susan Sontag rsquo s otherwise indispensable introduction to Summer in Baden-Baden is her peremptory opening declaration that she would include it among the most beautiful exalting and original achievements of a century rsquo s worth of fiction and para-fic

In 1996 Jack Miles won the Pulitzer Prize for biography with a learned gripping semi-plausible flight of fancy Since the Hebrew Bible is doubtlessamong other thingsa collection of stories about a figure or figures Elohim Yahweh El Shaddai etc whom Westerners have agreed to call God Miles p

In our Amazon com Borders rsquo n rsquo Barnes amp Noble world we non-academics at least no longer pay much attention to libraries When was the last time you got worked up over anything connected with a library shortened hours confusing online catalogues Well for many Americans all that

Most Americans who were adults during the Carter administration probably remember Jimmy Carter as a well-intentioned if somewhat inept politician a policy wonk avant la lettre who presided over 20 percent inflation and the Iran hostage debacle Since then of course he has become an admired huma

In 1976 Bruno Bettelheim caused a stir with The Uses of Enchantment arguing that Grimms rsquo fairy tales could be read as Freudian fables of adolescence identity and sexual maturation After some initial shock the consensus was that Bettelheim had a point Now another partisan intellectual the

Since the last of William F Cody rsquo s Wild West Shows was put on in 1916 scarcely anyone alive today can still remember them But for over 30 years those extravagant spectacles copyrighted in 1883 which featured live animals real Indians including for a time Sitting Bull and thunderous

O K post-Christian we rsquo ve read our Nietzsche postmodern the MLA insists on it postcolonial goes without saying post-structuralist ho-hum but post-cultural Can Christopher Clausen an English professor at Penn State be serious Indeed he can First assume that culture in the old s