Posts by author
Michael Berger
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Meet Mario Bellatin
“A few years ago the Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin attended one of those literary conferences here where writers are asked to talk about their own favorites. Unwilling to make a choice, he invented a Japanese author named Shiki Nagaoka and…
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The Lures of a Younger Land
I live in a young country but it seems like we’ve aged like no other place in the world, despite our obscene superabundance. Nowhere is this more apparent than in what we eat and how we eat. And right now…
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We’ve Always Been Postmodern?
“And while postmodern books would, you’d think, have to be published after the modern period — in the 20th or 21st centuries — could postmodernism exist without “Tristram Shandy”? We think not.” At Jacket Copy a while ago, Carolynn Kellog…
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A Field Guide To Military Urbanism
“I mean, when you’re forced to smuggle, by sheer necessity of survival, due to forces completely outside of your own control, when the power to decide your own destiny has been taken from you (as a nation), can it really…
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The Joys Of Overland Travel
In my opinion, the worst part about travelling is flying. It’s expensive, it’s boring, the food is awful, the people are usually not that interesting, the environmental and financial impact is profound and it takes a long, long time, especially…
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An Agrarian Revolution In Detroit (And Oakland)
“Were I an aspiring farmer in search of fertile land to buy and plow, I would seriously consider moving to Detroit. There is open land, fertile soil, ample water, willing labor, and a desperate demand for decent food. And there…
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Over at the Splinter Generation
“It starts to put the world in perspective. You start meeting real people. You meet moms, and you meet children, and you meet dads, and uncles, and grandpas, and you know, the people that I consider to be heroes. I…
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Introducing Emily Hahn
“Whenever I think of the Christmas season I spent in the eastern reaches of the Belgian Congo, in 1932, I experience a floating sense of unreality. A number of questions occur to me and are unanswered. For example, where exactly…
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David Cronenberg’s First Feature Film
I watch movies so people will show me the things that make me flinch, question myself, curse the heavens, and want to enroll in primal scream therapy. I don’t think I read for the same reasons. But movies, I feel,…
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Immigrants Make For Safe Cities
“If you want to find a safe city, first determine the size of the immigrant population,” says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. “If the immigrant community represents a large proportion of the population, you’re likely in…
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“Empire Of Illusion,” A Book I Haven’t Read Yet
One of the great things about the bookstore business is you get to be the first to see what’s new. And when you work for a small, used bookstore, the buyers are pretty picky about what they want to carry,…
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Small Is Not Cute, It’s Huge
“I was traveling and barely understood how I’d ended up there on a Ferris wheel at night, dangling above a town I didn’t know, thousands of miles from anyone I knew well, looking out at the dark cliffs, ocean, and…