Cultural Affairs

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What is the foundation of civilization? The longtime answer has been the wheel. Other scholars claim that agriculture marks the beginning of civilization, or the domestication of animals.

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Homeira Qaderi’s Dancing in the Mosque starts with a mother’s “Once Upon a Time” folkloric Afghan fable for her son about a magical lamp that will grant his wishes.

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Though Tom Zoellner’s The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America came out at the end of this unprecedented year, it is unlikely that even the author could have imagined the “cha

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“Cities truly have occupied a unique place in human history and civilization and this timely book certainly relates how cities have become so critically important to humanity’s rise.”

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For three decades photographer Dana Gluckstein has been documenting the lives of indigenous nations.

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“Cecilia Aragon is no less than a thrilling inspiration to anyone who wants to accomplish something that frightens them or who has been discouraged from trying.”

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“the term ‘hard-boiled’ came to mean a type of character that readers can, on the one hand idealize, while on the other hand, they can rely on for certainty in an uncertain world.

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The unifying thread in this thoughtful collection is being foreign in Palestine: Ajnabi or ajnabiya in Arabic.

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“With the ever-increasing numbers of poor adults and children in the United States, and current government efforts to further decrease benefits for them, this is an extremely timely book.”

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Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America is a must read for those who want to understand the media phenomenon now in the White House.”

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“Matt Haig is allowing us a trip inside his mind and the sources of his anxiety.

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“For the writers of this anthology, personal essays are political acts. . . . it’s an accessible, engaging book . . .”

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“Lucy Jones has earned a place of distinction among contemporary expressionist visionaries.”

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“We need anthropology now more than ever. As Ruth Benedict once noted prophetically, ‘The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human difference.’”

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The Digital Plenitude: The Decline of Elite Culture and the Rise of New Media by Jay David Bolter is a book about exactly that: the decline of one thing and the rise of another.

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"D'Angour writes for a general audience without losing the reader or the subject of Socrates in Love: the complexities of Greek philosophy."

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“‘Florence received its greatest gift with the birth of Leonardo, and lost infinitely more with his death.’ Da Vinci was so much more than an artist; he brought sophistication and reverie t

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Art and Arcana offers glorious illustrations, fascinating backstories, and the occasional painful misstep of a franchise entering its 40th year.”

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“Throughout his moviemaking career, Hughes relentlessly worked the Hollywood system to fuel his ego, his libido, and his ambition, but in the end, he was undone by his own paranoia.

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The Columbus Museum of Art commemorates the centenary of The Harlem Renaissance with an exhibit titled I Too Sing America, which is also the title of the beautifully curated companion book

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Jay Sexton puts American history in a global perspective.

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In Pioneer Park in Dallas, past the statue of romantic cowboys and iconic longhorns, in a far corner of the park—a stone’s throw from the Kay Bailey Hutchison Conference Center—stands a monument.

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“Alice Sparberg Alexiou makes us miss the Bowery— more than we ever knew we could.”

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