Arguably: essays

All American. Gods of our fathers: the United States of enlightenment

The private Jefferson

Jefferson vs. the Muslim pirates

Benjamin Franklin: free and easy

John Brown: the man who ended slavery

Abraham Lincoln: misery's child

Mark Twain: American radical

Upton Sinclair: a capitalist primer

JFK: in sickness and by stealth

Saul Bellow: the great assimilator

Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita

John Updike: No way ; Mr. Geniality

Vidal Loco

America the Banana Republic

An Anglosphere future

Political animals

Old enough to die

In defense of foxhole atheists

In search of the Washington novel

Eclectic Affinities. Isaac Newton: flaws of gravity

The men who made England: Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall"

Edmund Burke: reactionary prophet

Samuel Johnson: demons and dictionaries

Gustave Flaubert: I'm with Stupide

The dark side of Dickens

Marx's journalism: the Grub Street years

Rebecca West: things worth fighting for

Ezra Pound: a revolutionary simpleton

On "Animal Farm"

Jessica Mitford's poison pen

W. Somerset Maugham: Poor Old Willie

Evelyn Waugh: the permanent adolescent

P. G. Wodehouse: The Honorable Schoolboy

Anthony Powell: An Omnivorous Curiosity

John Buchan: Spy Thriller's Father

Graham Greene: I'll be damned

Death from a salesman: Graham Greene's bottle ontology

Loving Philip Larkin

Stephen Spender: a nice bloody fool

Edward Upward: the captive mind

C. L. R. James: mid off, not right on

J. G. Ballard: the catastrophist

Fraser's Flashman: scoundrel time

Fleet Street's finest: from Waugh to Frayn

Saki: where the wild things are

Harry Potter: the boy who lived

Amusements, annoyances, and disappointments. Why women aren't funny

Stieg Larsson: the author who played with fire

As American as apple pie

So many men's rooms, so little time

The new commandments

In your face

Wine drinkers of the world, unite

Charles, Prince of Piffle

Offshore accounts. Afghanistan's dangerous bet

First, silence the whistle-blower

Believe me, it's torture

Iran's waiting game

Long live democratic seismology

Benazir Bhutto: daughter of destiny

From Abbottabad to worse

The perils of partition

Algeria: a French quarrel

The case of Orientalism

Edward Said: where the Twain should have met

The swastika and the cedar

Holiday in Iraq

Tunisia: at the desert's edge

What happened to the suicide bombers of Jerusalem?

Childhood's end: an African nightmare

The Vietnam Syndrome

Once upon a time in Germany

Worse than "Nineteen Eighty-four"

North Korea: A nation of racist dwarves

The eighteenth brumaire of the Castro dynasty

Hugo Boss

Is the Euro doomed?

Overstating Jewish power

The case for humanitarian intervention

Legacies of totalitarianism. Victor Serge: pictures from an inquisition

André Malraux: one man's fate

Arthur Koestler: the zealot

Isabel Allende: Chile Redux

The Persian version

Martin Amis: lightness at midnight

Imagining Hitler

Victor Klemperer: survivor

A war worth fighting

Just give peace a chance?

W. G. Sebald: requiem for Germany

Words' worth. When the king saved God

Let them eat pork rinds

Stand up for Denmark!

Eschew the taboo

She's no fundamentalist

Burned out

Easter charade

Don't mince words

History and mystery

Words matter

This was not looting

The "other" L-word

The you decade

Suck it up

A very, very dirty word

Prisoner of shelves.

All American. Gods of our fathers: the United States of enlightenment

The private Jefferson

Jefferson vs. the Muslim pirates

Benjamin Franklin: free and easy

John Brown: the man who ended slavery

Abraham Lincoln: misery's child

Mark Twain: American radical

Upton Sinclair: a capitalist primer

JFK: in sickness and by stealth

Saul Bellow: the great assimilator

Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita

John Updike: No way ; Mr. Geniality

Vidal Loco

America the Banana Republic

An Anglosphere future

Political animals

Old enough to die

In defense of foxhole atheists

In search of the Washington novel

Eclectic Affinities. Isaac Newton: flaws of gravity

The men who made England: Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall"

Edmund Burke: reactionary prophet

Samuel Johnson: demons and dictionaries

Gustave Flaubert: I'm with Stupide

The dark side of Dickens

Marx's journalism: the Grub Street years

Rebecca West: things worth fighting for

Ezra Pound: a revolutionary simpleton

On "Animal Farm"

Jessica Mitford's poison pen

W. Somerset Maugham: Poor Old Willie

Evelyn Waugh: the permanent adolescent

P. G. Wodehouse: The Honorable Schoolboy

Anthony Powell: An Omnivorous Curiosity

John Buchan: Spy Thriller's Father

Graham Greene: I'll be damned

Death from a salesman: Graham Greene's bottle ontology

Loving Philip Larkin

Stephen Spender: a nice bloody fool

Edward Upward: the captive mind

C. L. R. James: mid off, not right on

J. G. Ballard: the catastrophist

Fraser's Flashman: scoundrel time

Fleet Street's finest: from Waugh to Frayn

Saki: where the wild things are

Harry Potter: the boy who lived

Amusements, annoyances, and disappointments. Why women aren't funny

Stieg Larsson: the author who played with fire

As American as apple pie

So many men's rooms, so little time

The new commandments

In your face

Wine drinkers of the world, unite

Charles, Prince of Piffle

Offshore accounts. Afghanistan's dangerous bet

First, silence the whistle-blower

Believe me, it's torture

Iran's waiting game

Long live democratic seismology

Benazir Bhutto: daughter of destiny

From Abbottabad to worse

The perils of partition

Algeria: a French quarrel

The case of Orientalism

Edward Said: where the Twain should have met

The swastika and the cedar

Holiday in Iraq

Tunisia: at the desert's edge

What happened to the suicide bombers of Jerusalem?

Childhood's end: an African nightmare

The Vietnam Syndrome

Once upon a time in Germany

Worse than "Nineteen Eighty-four"

North Korea: A nation of racist dwarves

The eighteenth brumaire of the Castro dynasty

Hugo Boss

Is the Euro doomed?

Overstating Jewish power

The case for humanitarian intervention

Legacies of totalitarianism. Victor Serge: pictures from an inquisition

André Malraux: one man's fate

Arthur Koestler: the zealot

Isabel Allende: Chile Redux

The Persian version

Martin Amis: lightness at midnight

Imagining Hitler

Victor Klemperer: survivor

A war worth fighting

Just give peace a chance?

W. G. Sebald: requiem for Germany

Words' worth. When the king saved God

Let them eat pork rinds

Stand up for Denmark!

Eschew the taboo

She's no fundamentalist

Burned out

Easter charade

Don't mince words

History and mystery

Words matter

This was not looting

The "other" L-word

The you decade

Suck it up

A very, very dirty word

Prisoner of shelves.