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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
- California Historian Kevin Starr
- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
- William T. Vollmann: An American Life in Excess
- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Author Interviews
‘Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California’
Here is the Amazon.com page for the book and here is the website for the author Frances Dinkelspiel. We did this interview a couple of weeks ago via email. I told Frances to only answer the questions she found interesting. … Continue reading
Posted in Author Interviews, California, Jews
Tagged amazon, hall dances, jewish immigrant, teutonic hall, uc berkeley library, wilshire boulevard temple
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Neil Strauss Interview
Here’s an interview I did Oct. 31, 2007 with the author of “The Game: Inside the Secret Society of Pickup Artists”:
Posted in Author Interviews
Tagged game, Neil Strauss, oct 31
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An Interview With Novelist Melodie Bowsher
I talk to Melodie by phone Aug. 7, 2008 about her new book My Lost and Found Life. Luke: "You were the first woman hired by the Wall Street Journal?" Melodie: "That is correct. I hate to say how long … Continue reading
Posted in Author Interviews
Tagged bank of america, communications firm, dotcom crash, journalism school, rsquo, wall street journal
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An Interview With Novelist Eva Etzioni-Halevy
We did this via email (her website is here and her new book is "The Triumph of Deborah"): Q: How did you maintain your writing style despite years in academia? Normally academic writing ruins writers. A: For me it was … Continue reading
Posted in Author Interviews
Tagged breaking the glass ceiling, chief rabbi, culture shock, feminine strength, types of feminism, women of the bible
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Was Jack Nicholson’s Father Jewish?
I interviewed Dennis McDougal last week. He mentioned that Jack Nicholson’s father was Jewish. Khunrum emails: "Reminds me of that story when Groucho Marx’s daughter was not allowed to use the Beverly Hills Tennis Club pool. Groucho phoned up and … Continue reading
Posted in Author Interviews, Dennis McDougal
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The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them) by Peter Sagal
Publishers Weekly says: "NPR host Sagal (Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me) offers a hilarious, harmlessly prurient look at the banality of regular people’s strange and wicked pleasures. In the wake of the late-1990s obsession with other people’s fun, notes Sagal, … Continue reading
Posted in Articles, Author Interviews, Book Reviews
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Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)
Dennis Prager interviews author Carol Platt Liebau, a political analyst and commentator. Here’s a link to her new book. Isn’t there something immodest about all these people writing books on modesty? I thought Wendy Shalit and Rabbi Eliyahu Safran summed … Continue reading
Posted in Author Interviews, Sex
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‘Will You Die Soon?’
At American Jewish University’s Celebration of Jewish Books Sunday, I catch lectures by Gina Nahai, Ellen Feldman and Judith Viorst. Viorst talks about her son and daughter-in-law moving in for three months with their three kids. One of the kids … Continue reading
Posted in Author Interviews
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