Michael Johnson
I have no idea how Barack Obama got my email address but a few weeks ago there it was in my inbox — a message from the President. I decided to break my lifelong rule of zapping all emails from…
A wise man once said, “Show me a man who is married to a beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of sleeping with her.” When I heard this, I finally understood the Dominique Strauss Kahn (DSK)…
The Jew Who Was Ukrainian: How One Man’s Rip-Roaring Romp Through an Existential Wasteland Ended in a Bungled Attempt to Bump off the Exceptionally Great Leader of Mother Russia By Alexander Motyl(Cervena Barba Press, 186 pages, $16) Alexander Motyl was…
The 64th annual Cannes Film Festival, the leading international showcase for auteur films, closed Sunday night with the top award, the Palme d’Or, going to U.S. director Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life featuring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. The reclusive…
Old Russia hands like to argue over the precise moment that Soviet ideology began to look ridiculous to its citizens — the point at which reality hit people in the face. It’s a fair question because even in the 1980s,…
New Threats to Freedom Edited by Adam Bellow (Templeton Press, 317 pages, $25.95) Americans tend to think the desire for freedom is so universal that it is beyond discussion. We have it and everybody else wants it. In fact, freedom…
He has had only four years to develop his talent but already the professionals are singling him out as an exceptional child, apparently a true prodigy with natural, inborn musicianship. On Sunday, Jonathan Okseniuk, 4, will take the conductor’s baton…
Returning to New England after six months away in France, I find this country suffocating in its own domestic issues, strangely unconcerned by the momentous events in the Middle East or the dual tragedy in Japan. We have always been…
Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome Edited by Victor Davis Hanson (Princeton University Press, 278 pages, $27.95) Coming up for air after a couple of hours with this recent Victor Davis Hanson book,…
Except for a few jealous conductors who hate child prodigies, the music world has leapt aboard the “Jonathan” phenomenon, a precocious boy whose video clip has now passed 5,362,000 views on YouTube. By way of comparison, the video of Shaquille…
