At one point, Joan Didion was a writer, known for her books and essays, which people read and liked — or didn’t. There was The White Album, which everyone read, and A Year of Magical Thinking, which everyone bought, and an assorted many other titles that everybody claimed to know but probably didn’t. At her […]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has long been regarded as a true master of German literature. While few anglophone readers today are familiar with Goethe’s entire body of work, its influence, especially Faust, echoes in modern books, movies, classical and contemporary music, opera, and more. His first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, was one of […]

Soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and Guardians are all service members. We may focus on them storming a beach or driving a tank or soaring the skies in a jet, but regardless of what they do, they’re all said to be “in the service.” I recently spoke with retired Army 1st Sgt. Travis Baker, asking about […]

“New York is a city of things unnoticed,” declares Gay Talese at the beginning of A Town Without Time, the new collection of his journalistic work centered on New York. New Jersey-born Gay Talese made a brand-new start of it in New York in the early 1950s. After a stint as a copy boy for […]

No living American filmmaker can be plausibly said to have undergone such a profound artistic evolution as Clint Eastwood. From a greenhorn starring in Rawhide to an auteur of international standing in under a dozen years. Nor can any claim a comparable list of outright masterpieces: The Outlaw Josey Wales, Bronco Billy, Bird, the supreme […]

Dune: Prophecy, HBO’s prequel series to the blockbuster films of the same name, opens with a quasi-cryptic epigraph about war set against an abstract, smoky monochrome backdrop — an implicit promise to the viewer that it will deliver more of the awesome, austere sturm-and-drang that made those films the most artistically successful fantasy adaptations since […]

President-elect Trump plans to nominate ex-president of the border patrol union, Brandon Judd, as his ambassador to Chile. “I have personally known and worked with Brandon over the past nine years. Brandon helped me develop and implement the most effective Border Security policies in our Nation’s History,” Trump said Thursday night on Truth Social. “I...

President-elect Trump picked Anthony Salisbury to be the deputy Homeland Security Advisor on the White House Homeland Security Council. “Tony will bring his vast Law Enforcement, counter-narcotics, and counter-cartel experience to the White House where he will serve under Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor,” Trump said in a...

President-elect Trump named Caleb Vitello as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday night. Vitello has 23 years of experience at the agency and previously played significant roles in the deportations of illegal immigrants, Trump noted during his announcement. "A member of the Senior Executive Service, with over 23 years of service...

President-elect Trump nominated former border chief Rodney Scott as the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). “Rodney served nearly three decades in the Border Patrol, building vast experience and knowledge in Law Enforcement and Border Security,” Trump said in a Thursday night announcement on Truth Social. “Rodney served as the 24th Chief of...