My son just turned one year old and in this time of close living I have been recognizing those obsessive dreams, my first frustrations, in his. By helping him to walk I have re-lived my own frustrated desire to do so harmoniously.

This is a reflection on a review by Barbara King, a biological anthropologist at the College of William and Mary of Steven Pinker’s new book, “The Stuff of Thought” in the April 11, 2008 issue of the Times Literary Supplement.

Ned Ludd. You've heard the name, read the book, very probably got the T-shirt as well. Now you can hear the music – courtesy of the Italian folk-roots band of the same name.

What is called "creationism" is the belief that in six days the Judeo-Christian god created the universe and all the earthly species including humans in finished form much as they exist today. For centuries this view prevailed throughout the western world.

The mention of screenwriter John Howard Lawson conjures up images of a daunt, spirited genius, Dean of the Hollywood Ten, a leader among artists determined to defend himself and his colleagues in the face of one of the worst, most repressive campaigns against free speech in American history.

Well, we set it up because I have finished two books. I have a book on Alice Neal that maybe you saw some reference to, and I just finished a novel that I started out for my grandson, years ago, and I finally completed it – it’s called Iron Mountain.

I often wonder if our popular-culture addiction to violence derives less from a desire to slake some inward void, or from the so-called “CSI effect” that primes us to expect pseudo-scientific explanations for all manners of cruelty, than from the logic of the market.

The gripping drama of the skillfully written narrative in The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff reveals a generally untold angle of the civil rights movement: the press that covered it. Roberts is a veteran of the New York Times cadre of civil rights reporters, and Klibanoff is a Southern reporter.

Shortly after Richard Wright's passing in 1960, Julia Wright found hidden in her father's papers the manuscript for A Father's Law, the last unfinished novel by the iconic American novelist.

In a recent essay on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s advocacy for peace, titled "Vocation of Agony: A Personal Meditation on Dr. King's Legacy," Rev. Osagyefo Sekou elaborated a stirring call for deep moral change in America.

Chris Hedges recently published an article called "The Dangerous Atheism of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris," but he failed to include in it any indication of what he thinks is dangerous about their atheism.

For centuries, the idea that the Sun revolved around the Earth was unanimous. Ptolemy's old system – pretty new if we consider that other Greeks believed that in reality the Earth moved around the Sun – was the "vox populi" on cosmology.

I was disappointed that Daniel Day-Lewis won an Oscar for "There Will Be Blood," not because he's not a great actor (he is), but because the movie was such a betrayal of the book on which it was based.

Driving to the stables the other day – one eye on the road and the other on my half-empty gas gauge – I found myself thinking about Los Angeles.

I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know (if you didn't already) the good news that "Sicko" has been nominated for this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary. It was a pleasant surprise when we got the news on Tuesday.

Detroit, Mich. – An exhibition celebrating the life of Paul Robeson opened here last Saturday, Jan. 19, at Swords into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery.

Social class is usually treated as though it doesn't exist. But for working families struggling without good jobs or adequate pay, who lack health care or decent housing, the systemic economic divisions that determine their life chances.

Fairly commonly these days, poets end their volumes with a short prose section, usually footnotes or glosses on the poems.

US newspapers were all abuzz this month when Doris Lessing, most well-known for her novel The Golden Notebook, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Lessing also raised eyebrows when in an interview she proclaimed that 9/11 wasn't as bad as Americans thought).

Generally, an historical phenomenon is naturalized thanks to an absence of memory (hence the political value of neutrality and forgetting). Obviously not always for political reasons.