New Yorker
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Rational Irrationality: Why is Goldman Sachs so Goldmanesque?
One popular theory, which I heard the Times columnist Joe Nocera expounding on the radio yesterday, is that it all goes back to 1999, when the firm issued stock to the public. As an old-school Wall Street partnership, this story goes, Goldman valued its reputation too highly to get involved in some of the shenanigans that it has gotten mixed up in recently, and it could also afford to take the long view.
An Existential Threat Within Israel Endangers Its Democracy
Democracy is never fully achieved. At best, it’s an ambition, a state of becoming. In America, it took generations for blacks, women, and gays and lesbians to win the rights of citizenship—rights that, in many instances, remain incomplete.
Hendrik Hertzberg: Seconding Ezra Klein
Given that I am a onetime White House speechwriter , you might imagine that I would be displeased with Ezra Klein’s Political Scene essay in the March 19th New Yorker . Au contraire. Taking off on the work of the Texas A. & M. scholar George Edwards, Ezra has some tart things to say about Presidential speeches, including:
Quentin Rowan, a.k.a. Q. R. Markham, Plagiarism Addict
Spy novels embrace clichés—the double agent, the bomb-rigged briefcase—and “Assassin of Secrets,” published last fall, made a virtue of this tendency, piling one trope onto another to create a story that rang with wry knowingness. The book is set in the midst of the Cold War. The protagonist is Jonathan Chase, a suave secret agent with a background in martial arts—part James Bond, part Jason Bourne.