The Two Faces of Democracy: Decentering Agonism and Deliberation | Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (iasculture.org) How shall we understand the present moment in American history, which is, by the implications of American power and the political relations among nations, a moment in world history? Political scientists, historians, philosophers and thinkers of all kinds have been considering the question. None simply by professional pedigree brings any reliable wisdom to bear. Though expertise is preferable to amateurism, foolish experts of unsound judgment abound. The unsound judgem ..read more

The six-volume history that with its final published book, in 1953, undoubtedly secured Churchill that year’s Nobel Prize in Literature; “"for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values." Every day for the first four months of Donald Trump’s administration, I reminded all I could on Twitter that through his continued ownership of the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. — through which he daily earned income from those, foreign and domestic, doing business with the United States government — Trump was viol ..read more

I first published the following essay on Medium, on March 23, 2016. Nine months had passed since Trump announced his presidential candidacy, nine months that offered a surfeit of evidence as to his character. One hadn’t needed those nine months to judge his character, however. There had been, for instance, his earlier, dishonest and wicked, xenophobic campaign of racist delegitimization over Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Before that, the sum of Trump’s career, melding big-money business promotion and the culture of media personality — a subject I reference below, and which had for decad ..read more

It approaches a decade now since I last cared to celebrate the 4th of July, once a holiday I loved. This week's developments further dispirit me. For those reasons and because of the likely distraction of readers, I won't publish today. Then, I have the work of that intensive summer class I mentioned last week, and it now turns out I'm burdened by an ill-timed need, soon, to move, so I won't publish this week at all. See you next Thursday with chapter 5 of Reason for Being in the World, "Burn the Boats." Stay cool ..read more

Homo Vitruvius represents my literary face to the world while I work on novels behind the scenes. Dedicated to the essay form, both personal and intellectual, with forays into creative nonfiction, poetry, fiction, and more, it is my weekly creative engagement with the world. Every subscriber, free or paid, is appreciated and valued. As I say, you read; therefore, the writer exists. But if you can afford the paid subscription, that encouragement and support of my work and what I offer here delivers an affirmation almost beyond my ability to express in words. Thank you for reading. Subscribe ..read more

My thanks to the influx of new subscribers these past few weeks. I appreciate you. I appreciate my latest paid subscribers and the readers who’ve been buying me espresso. You’ve even known that I favor Intelligentsia Black Cat and Counter Culture Apollo. How cool is that? You guys are the best! You all know who you are. If you’ve been reading for more than a couple of weeks, you know that I reduced the publication schedule to only once a week and made all current writing free on publication. No more paid-access-only for anything newer than three months. But you see that the one piece of wri ..read more

The Old Shul, Orynyn, Ukraine (“It was so-called because no one among the living knew when and by whom the shul was built.’” Parts 1-2 We were all living in the same city for the first time in twenty years. Over almost that many years, Jeff, followed by Sharyn and me, and finally our parents, ages 82 and 77, had moved to Los Angeles from our roots in New York City. It had been eighteen years since the heart attack that nearly killed Mac. I had gone to see him in Rockaway’s Peninsula General Hospital for the first time as soon as I was permitted, two days afterwards. He looked terribly weak ..read more

Welträson: Reason for Being in the World, Part 1 “Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair.” James Joyce, Finnegans Wake I said that I seemed by my nature to seek understanding historically. As with most stories, I wanted always to begin at the beginning, see how things came to be, experience their development, the obstacles and the overcomings, work my way to the resolution, however irresolute it might show itself to be. Histories offer explanations, how this came from that, how that led to this, how we got here – whoever we, whatever here happens to be in the cont ..read more

Painting by physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf commemorating the ninetieth birthday of mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson Introduction The experiment is partly in the process: I begin publicly before I have finished privately. I know where I’m going. That’s in the title. I know the impulses in myself and the provocations in the world that prompt me to write. I know much of what I want to say and, generally, how I want to present it. But there are many decisions, of expression and selection – inclusion and exclusion – and a final vision yet to be determined. This is all to say that while I ..read more

Forward into the Past: Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle, Ukraine. Photo credit: Julia Dean Excerpted from The Twentieth Century Passes: a memoir of my father’s life. An earlier version of this essay was originally published in Footnote #1: A Literary Journal of History. By the time I was born, three of my grandparents were already dead. They had died young, in their early 60s, just before and after the birth of my sister, Sharyn, nearly eleven years before me. My parents had had me, their third, unplanned child, late for those days, my father at 42. The only grandparent my brother and I knew was M ..read more