Friday, May 29, 2009
Books / Politics / News Sound Smart, Read These: Good Books, Fine Art, Bad Medicine
Posted by Mark Asch on Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:19 PM
Why is healthcare so expensive? The answer is pretty obvious — profit motive — but the New Yorker's Atul Gawande does do a pretty thorough, knowledgeable job of reporting and explaining how and why doctors lean (or don't) towards more medicine instead of the best medicine. I wish he'd addressed more specific legislative debates, but still a must-read.
Finally, someone walks past the obvious anti-affirmative action red meat of Sonia Sotomayor's ruling in the New Haven firefighter case, and patiently reminds us that no, we're not actually at a point where we can be blissfully free of any racial allowances and considerations.
God bless Dissent magazine: Should We Still Make Things? A Symposium.
Inasmuch as Roberto Bolaño has monopolized the book-reading attention of pretty much every casual reader in the city, you will sound really smart if you drop the names of any of these lesser-known Spanish-language writers, recommended by Chad Post of the heroic lit-in-translation press Open Letter.
The White House art collection: now with 100% less airbrushed Western landscapes, and 100% more on-loan Ab-Ex and Pop Art by Jasper Johns, Bob Rauschenburg and Ed Ruscha (pictured).
New fiction: "In the Crossfire", by Ha Jin, from Granta.
Old clip: V.S. Naipaul and Carl Hiaasen on Charlie Rose, in 2000. This is what's called "Punching above your weight", Carl. Quite possibly literally, given that this is Sir Vidia we're talking about.
Comments (0)