Editor’s Note: Last week tragedy struck and deprived the serious reading world of Terry Teachout, the arts and theatre critic of the Wall Street Journal since 2003, a monthly essayist for Commentary magazine, a major biographer of everyone from Louis…
Just as his hero, Orson Welles, is remembered mainly for Citizen Kane, the first of the 16 films he directed, the name of Peter Bogdanovich, who died on January 6 at the age of 82, will for a long time…
Of course the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year of 2021 had to finish its cruel handiwork by taking Betty White from us. She was there from the beginning. From the beginning of TV, that is. According to some…
The sad news of the death of John Madden has been met with the tidal wave of praise and appreciation that the memory of this great American deserves. His services to the country and the sport he loved are too…
Joan Didion, who died on Thursday at the age of 87, was a California girl, born to an affluent family in Sacramento and educated at Berkeley. In her 20s, she spent seven years on the editorial staff of Vogue in…
When you walk the Fredericksburg battlefield, especially near the stone wall at the base of Mayre’s Heights (which is just beyond the National Park’s visitor’s center), there is an eerie feeling of tragedy mixed with bewilderment and awe. The battle…
It was a neighborhood Fourth of July BBQ, 2011. I had recently returned from my third combat deployment in Afghanistan. I was enjoying a cold beer and swapping war stories with a fellow Marine and Vietnam veteran. Listening quietly was…
Former Republican Senator, majority leader, and 1996 presidential candidate Bob Dole died in his sleep Sunday morning. He was 98, and one of the ever-dwindling number of survivors of what has been called, with good reason, the greatest generation. No…
In Finishing the Hat (2010) and Look, I Made a Hat (2011), his two massive compendia of his own lyrics, complete with commentary thereupon, Stephen Sondheim was tough on even the greatest of his American songwriting predecessors — at least the…
