SWAN SONG FOR THE LONE WOLVES In the September issue of “Harper’s” magazine, Garret Keizer, a contributing editor and author writes about his recent one year stint as a teacher at a high school where he’d been an instructor thirty years before. Some things hadn’t changed. 

OF MAUS AND MEN The Arab Spring released a season of discontent around the globe. People barred from their dreams are beginning to look beyond themselves to explain that failure and are questioning the structure of societies as a whole. As a result, gatekeepers are being challenged

WHY WE SHOULD RULE BY THE BOOK I quoted the writer Philip Roth last year who said great writing in the United States was on the decline. He didn’t say why and I’ve been speculating on the question ever since. Is it true, for example? Certainly the number of self-published books is

A COSMIC LAUGH I recently received a note from one of my Facebook pals who wrote he’d had a letter to the editor printed in a local newspaper. Could he say he was a published author now, he wondered. My response was to congratulate him and add an “amen” to his comment that he w