Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler would undoubtedly have regarded the Iranian demonstrations as not really serious. There was no attempt to seize power, neither tanks in the streets nor the storming ...

These days, summer movies come in three basic flavors: the big-budget, special-effects-drenched spectacle (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek), the gross-out sex comedy (The Hangover), and the sweetly romantic ...

All of a sudden, Obamacare doesn’t look quite as inevitable as Washington thought it was in the spring. The early cost estimates are frightening some Democrats, as are the ideas ...

Ten years ago, on April 25, 1999, while attending a Beijing wedding, I heard a rumor that a large crowd of people had gathered at Zhongnanhai, the Chinese government’s compound. ...

Health care is a game-changer. The permanent game-changer. The pendulum will swing, and one day, despite their best efforts, the Republicans will return to power, and, in the right circumstances, ...

If you want to know where the future is headed, look where the people are going. And if you want to know where the people are going, check with U-Haul. ...

On January 20, 2002, Leon Kass, chairman of the newly appointed President’s Council on Bioethics, opened the Council’s first session with a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1843 short story “The ...

It would be difficult to think of anyone more ideally suited to pen a passionate defense of copyright law than novelist Mark Helprin. Helprin has written several of the finest ...

Lorin Maazel is in his office, wearing blue jeans, surrounded by musical scores — some of them written by himself. The conductor, born in 1930, is wrapping up his tenure ...

The only thing truly surprising about Michael Mann’s Public Enemies is that it took him so long to make it. From his debut film, Thief, down through Heat, Collateral, and ...

1789 When you deserted your military post, you fled from India as a refugee, then sailed — where else? — to Macao off the coast of China, at the edge of the South China ...

Democracy Drifting Away I read William Voegeli’s review of Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift (“Can We Outlast the Contradictions?” — June 22) with pleasure and genuine interest. His depiction of my book ...

‐ Let’s hope he turns out to be a better senator than he was a comedian. ‐ The saga of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and his Argentinian mistress displayed two ...