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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:
- Robert Putnam: The Man Who Counted What America Lost
- W. Bradford Wilcox: The Sociologist Who Tells America to Get Married
- Peter Moskos: The Cop Who Talks to People
- Julius Krein
- Ryan Burge: The Numbers Man in the Empty Church
- Emily Oster: The Economist in the Delivery Room
- The Most Ridiculous Story Ever Told
- Tanner Greer
- Economist Tyler Cowen
- Richard Reeves: A Life in Institutions
- Jake Adelstein: The Reporter Who Became His Story
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
- Moira Greyland
- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
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: Literature
Brave New World (8-15-21)
Here are my notes on the book: * At the end of the book, I had nothing. I had no comments. I had no reactions. I didn’t laugh or cry or have any emotional or intellectual reaction to the book. … Continue reading
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‘The Cat Person debate shows how fiction writers use real life does matter’
From The Guardian: “It was Graham Greene who wrote that every writer has a splinter of ice in their heart. I think he was right: you have to have it, otherwise you would spend all your time worrying about the … Continue reading
Posted in Amy Klein, Literature
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The Guardian: ‘It is obscene’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pens blistering essay against social media sanctimony
The Guardian article. From ChimaManda.com: In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive … Continue reading
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Dreams and Anna Karenina
Janet Malcolm writes: * Tolstoy was obviously well acquainted with the guard who stops us at the border of sleep and awakening and confiscates the brilliant, dangerous spoils of our nighttime creations. The capacity to recreate these fictions in the … Continue reading
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When novels still mattered (4-17-21)
Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=138437 Where Do Journalists Come From? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=137084 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Krim The American Novel Made Us https://www.cwanderson.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Tom-Wolfe-Gives-an-Eyewitness-Report-of-the-Birth-of-The-New-Journalism-New-York-Magazine.pdf
Posted in Literature
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The Power Of Flannery O’Connor
Frederick Crews writes: O’Connor had no cause to disprize university writing programs, for she herself, despite the marked individuality of her work, was the first prominent American author to have been significantly shaped by one. Scholars who examine her early … Continue reading
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Bellow: A Biography
James Atlas writes in 2000: * A sickly child, afflicted with respiratory ailments, he was his mother’s favorite; she treated him like an invalid. * It was in temperament that Bellow diverged from the family line. He was the designated … Continue reading
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Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex
Here are some excerpts from this 2008 book: * “I realized it was because he did not care if he used the same adjective three times in three consecutive sentences. When you read one of his books, you realize what … Continue reading
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Kazuo Ishiguro Sees What the Future Is Doing to Us
From the New York Times: * As a man is, so he writes, and Ishiguro’s sentences have nothing to prove. In the hands of some of his contemporaries — Martin Amis, say, or Salman Rushdie — the novel can sometimes … Continue reading
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The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia 1880-1939
John Carey writes in this 1993 book: * This book is about the response of the English literary intelligentsia to the new phenomenon of mass culture. It argues that modernist literature and art can be seen as a hostile reaction … Continue reading
Posted in Adolf Hitler, England, Literature, Oxford
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