Elaine Margolin
By Elaine Margolin
-
Culture How Peggy Guggenheim Re-Invented Modernism
Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern By Francine Prose Yale University Press, 240 pages, $25 I feel compelled to begin my review of the novelist Francine Prose’s biography of art dealer and collector Peggy Guggenheim with a lengthy quote from another writer, in this case the Russian playwright Vladimir Sorokin, who wrote about Guggenheim…
-
Books Of a Jewish Banking Dynasty, Only the Sculptures Survived
Edmund de Waal, a British artist and the son of a clergyman of the Church of England, knew he was missing a vital part of himself, but he wasn’t sure what it was. A middle-aged married father of three, he had spent his adult life ensconced in his London studio, where he made thousands of…
-
Culture A Brutal Narcissist: The Life of Feminist Icon Tillie Olsen
Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles By Panthea Reid Rutgers University Press, 464 pages, $34.95. Tillie Olsen’s raw and emotionally charged story “I Stand Here Ironing” was a public revelation of the private and isolating pain of the modern mother. Her exposure of the overwhelming love and frustration, the hope and desire, the anger and…
-
Culture Supreme Jewish Achievement
Louis D. Brandeis: A Life By Melvin I. Urofsky Pantheon Books, 976 pages, $40.00. Louis Brandeis was the Jewish Barack Obama. Or, if not, perhaps the legal Henry Kissinger. Perhaps smarter (graduating from Harvard Law School with the highest GPA on record) but less political, he was the golden boy of the judiciary and the…
-
Culture Written in Stone
American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone By D.D. Guttenplan Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 592 pages, $35.00. When only 33, D.D. Guttenplan took on a courageous endeavor that would overwhelm him for the next two decades: He set out to write a substantive biography about the legendary maverick journalist I.F. Stone, a man…
-
Culture Chewing the Fat in Mecca, Medina, Damascus…
The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East By Neil MacFarquhar Public Affairs, 359 pages, $26.95. Having seen more than enough violence during a decade-long stint as a reporter in the Middle East, Neil MacFarquhar branched out from his beat as Cairo Bureau Chief at…
-
Culture Poet and Activist Rich, Still Dreaming Of a World Without Borders
A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1996-2008 By Adrienne Rich W.W. Norton & Co., 208 pages, $24.95. Seventy-nine-year-old Adrienne Rich has always refused to succumb to the multiple traumas that life has thrust upon her. One senses that this courageous poet and political activist has been blessed with an overabundance of resilience and…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News An Israeli restaurant chain said it closed due to boycotts. Protesters are celebrating.
- 2
Sports It’s so cool that Sandy Koufax was there for that
- 3
Opinion Jews are worried about Zohran Mamdani. Here’s why they shouldn’t be
- 4
Opinion Can an idyllic dream of Israel ever be reality? She says: ‘Coexistence, My Ass’
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward NYC’s Eric Adams condemns anti-Israel art exhibit: ‘Activism is not an excuse for antisemitism’
-
News How Mamdani built bridges to Jewish New Yorkers, from Williamsburg to Park Slope
-
Fast Forward Heritage Foundation president stands by Tucker Carlson after host platforms antisemitism
-
Fast Forward Ellison’s Oracle poised to run TikTok, raising hopes for tougher rules against antisemitism
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
