Books to Chew On, New York Times, March 26, 2006. The Edible Books Festival and a history of bibliophagy.
When Every Pitch Counts, Newsday, March 26, 2006. Review of Sam Walker’s Fantasyland.
Total Recall, Nextbook.org, January 18, 2006. Oprah Winfrey, James Frey, and Elie Wiesel.
Oases Springing Up Here For Ancient Game of Go, New York Times, January 14, 2006. 250 Go players gather for the North American Oza; Feng Yun expected to win (and she did).
They Shoot Adverbs, Don’t They? New York Times, December 25, 2005. Reconstructing the Noun and Verb Rodeo, Milton Crandall’s four-day talking marathon held in 1928.
Documenting the World, Newsday, December 11, 2005. Holiday roundup of photography books.
Gift Rap, Washington Post Magazine, November 24, 2005. Family gift-giving tensions at Hanukkah.
A Photographic Conversation, Newsday, November 6, 2005. Review of by The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer.
Stacking the Deck, Washington Post Book World, October 30, 2005. Review of four books about card games.
The Plaster-Filled Eggshell Gambit, New York Times Arts & Leisure, October 16, 2005. Two exhibits of artists’ chess sets at the Noguchi Museum and Luhring Augustine Gallery.
LCD in Aisle 3, U.S. News & World Report, August 15, 2005. Supermarkets roll out handheld scanners and other technology to compete with superstores.
Class Subconscious, Nextbook.org, June 9, 2005. On the New York Times’ “Class Matters” series.
Of Elks and Epidurals, Slate, May 17, 2005. Birthing from Within and the passive-aggressive tug of natural childbirth.
The Sensitive Skinhead, Washington Post Book World, March 13, 2005. Review of A Changed Man by Francine Prose.
Haute Chocolate, Newsday, February 13, 2005. Review of Chocolate by Mort Rosenblum.
Second Fiddle, Nextbook.org, January 4, 2005. Harvey Fierstein takes over as Tevye.
Tricking (and Treating) the Eye, Newsday, December 5, 2004. Holiday roundup of art books.
An Innocent Flirtation? Nextbook.org, November 24, 2004. A Jewish subplot on Six Feet Under.
World Domination: The Game. Washington Post Magazine, November 14, 2004. The Potomac Tea & Knife Society plays Diplomacy, Allan Calhamer’s classic board game.
Pass Go, Collect a Ticket to Paradise, New York Times Arts & Leisure, November 14, 2004. Looking at a sugoroku from Asian Games: The Art of Contest at the Asia Society.
All in the Family, Nextbook.org, October 6, 2004. Interview with Yuri Slezkine, author of The Jewish Century.
Big Cheese, The New Yorker, September 27, 2004. Jonathan White of Bobolink Dairy hopes his Kerry cows will continue the noble tradition of presidential cheeses.
Boratty Behavior, Nextbook.org, August 11, 2004. The Blues Brothers and Da Ali G Show.
Off Broadway, Nextbook.org, June 9, 2004. Tony Kushner v. Hedy Weiss and Caroline, or Change.
Damn Yankees, Nextbook.org, May 2, 2004. Interview with David Shields.
Pepsi Degeneration, The New Yorker, March 29, 2004. Vera Lutter watches the dismantling of a neon sign from inside a giant pinhole camera.
Fiddler Crabs, Nextbook.org, March 2, 2004. A revival of Fiddler on the Roof raises questions about “ethnic cleansing,” but the show was never authentic.
Connecting With Dots, Nextbook.org, February 4, 2004. Interview with Abraham Nemeth, blind mathematician who devised a system of Braille mathematical notation.
Game Time, Boston Globe Ideas, December 7, 2003. Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum win Game of the Year for New England, and what we should think about when we think about board games.
Maps, Superheroes and Celestial Bodies, As Seen From Your Couch, Newsday, November 30, 2003. Holiday roundup of art books.
Mob Injustice, Newsday, Nov 16, 2003. Review of And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank by Steve Oney.
Brooklyn Dodger, Nextbook.org, October 22, 2003. Tugging at the Jewish threads in Fortress of Solitude and other writings of Jonathan Lethem.
Where Ladies Lunched, and Boys Grew Up, New York Times, August 29, 2003. My Manhattan essay about living on 20th Street.
Playing Baseball by the Numbers, Newsday, June 1, 2003. Review of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball.
Recommended Reading, May 25, 2003. Review of Henry Kisor’s What’s That Pig Outdoors? A Memoir of Deafness in group summer-reading roundup.
Harlem Renaissance, Washington Post Magazine, March 2, 2003. On the road with the Harlem Globetrotters.
Games People Play, New York Sun, February 2, 2003. Board games at the Toy Fair.
Sold Separately, The New Yorker, January 20, 2003. Sid Sackson’s family breaks up his mammoth board-game collection.
Old Masters and Modern Visions, Newsday, December 1, 2002. Holiday roundup of art books.
From the Bully Pulpit, Newsday, October 6, 2002. Review of Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani.
In the House of Hoops, New York Sun, October 4, 2002. The new Basketball Hall of Fame building opens in Springfield, Mass.
Survivor: The College Version, Newsday, September 1, 2002. Review of The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College by Jacques Steinberg.
Who Is Tyler Hicks? Details, June 2002. A profile of the photojournalist who distinguished himself in Afghanistan.
Still Life With Garbage and Bee, ARTnews, May 2002. Profile of sculptor Tom Friedman.
Taking the Local, ARTnews, May 2002. Profile of photographer Thomas Roma.
“Making More Andys Possible,” ARTnews, May 2002. Profile of Joel Wachs of the Andy Warhol Foundation
A Slice of the Camel, New York Times Book Review, April 7, 2002. Review of Revenge, by Laura Blumenfeld.
A Beautiful Hand, The New Yorker, March 11, 2002. Dave Bayer, mathematician and hand double for Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind.
Getting the Big Picture, ARTnews, February 2002. Photojournalism in the wake of 9/11.
A Journalist Learns Art Can Be Fast But Hard to Fasten, New York Times Arts & Leisure, January 20, 2002. Janet Malcolm shows her collages in a group show at Lori Bookstein.
Museum-Hopping in Your Living Room, Newsday, December 9, 2001. Holiday roundup
of art books.
Building the Bioluminescent Bunny, ARTnews, December 2001. Profile of Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac.
His Worst Critic Proved Wrong, New York Times Arts & Leisure, November 18, 2001. Photographer and Peruvian-textile collector John Cohen.
The Man Who Snubbed Lenin, Lingua Franca, November 2001. A biography of David Rowland Francis, U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, by Harper Barnes
Speaking Mameloshn, Newsday, October 21, 2001. Review of Yiddish: A Nation of Words by Miriam Weinstein and The New Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten.
Courting Rituals, Newsday, October 14, 2001. Review of John Edgar Wideman’s Hoop Roots.
The Incredible Growing Art Museum, ARTnews, October 2001. The building boom after Bilbao.
From Russia, With Loans, ARTnews, October 2001. The Corcoran partners with the State Russian Museum.
Serf Rising, Lingua Franca, July/August 2001. Aleksandr Nikitenko’s Up From Serfdom: My Childhood and Youth in Russia 1804-1824 translated into English.
A World of Games, Washington Post Magazine, July 15, 2001. In search of Teeko, the board game that magician and gambling authority John Scarne thought would guarantee his immortality.
Man of Steel, ARTnews, June 2001. A visit with Mark di Suvero at his Queens studio.
Defending the Truth, Newsday, May 27, 2001. Review of two books on the David Irving trial: Lying About Hitler by Richard J. Evans and The Holocaust on Trial by D.D. Guttenplan.
Translating the Good Book, Newsday, May 6, 2001. Review of Benson Bobrick’s Wide as the Waters.
Contract Sport, Lingua Franca, April 2001. Former UCLA athlete Ramogi Huma tries to organize a union for college athletes.
The End of the Affair, Brill’s Content, April 2001. Review of Stefan Maechler’s The Wilkomirski Affair.
Export, Details, March 2001. Russian pop star Philip Kirkorov swings Latin
The Roaches That Came In from the Cold, ARTnews, February 2001. Catherine Chalmers paints and photographs cockroaches in her SoHo loft.
Indelible Prints, ARTnews, February 2001. Ten photographers talk about the pictures they can’t forget.
Hasidim in the Heartland, Newsday, November 5, 2000. Review of Postville, by Stephen G. Bloom.
Case Closed, Boston Phoenix, November 1996. Review of James Ellroy’s memoir My Dark Places.