“... people, is that one day, through the creation of free institutions with sovereign power, Europe may once again cover its true geographical, and even more important, historical dimensions.’ He wants nothing less than a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, and, in the absence of any obvious candidate for the Imperial Throne, it is clear that in his mind ...”

“... they are treated as irrational, the gene-preserving thesis seems to be called for. However that may be, Posner argues that sexual behaviour, in contrast with preference, is mostly the outcome of rational choice; sex does not dethrone reason. The balance of private costs and benefits determines the relative frequency of different sexual practices: for many ...”

“... could further have made the perfectly reasonable argument that if you are going to lose you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and stick to your principles. But Heffernan and Marqusee believe that the election could have been won and was lost largely because socialist principles were not stuck to. This is surely much more doubtful. Prima facie it ...”

“... of species togetherness: it’s a warning that by denying kinship with the worst of our kind, we may never know ourselves at all. There have been others like Dahmer, but he’ll do as the worst. Masters quotes Colin Wilson: ‘The study of murder is not the study of abnormal human nature; it is the study of human nature stained by an act that makes it ...”

“... of Operations, not so much doctoring the spin as applying snake oil to it, said: ‘This may be Dodge City, but Wyatt is in town.’ According to this model, it seems that the marshals from out of town would sooner shoot it out with ‘the bandits’ than, say, take advantage of superior numbers and firepower to encourage them to throw down their ...”

“... body is the negative term, and if woman is the body, then women are that negativity, whatever it may be.’ Consequently, whatever or wherever women are, and however they are idealised, tends also to be devalued. With the entry of women, occupations or professions regularly lose social and economic status. Women’s troubles, whether economic or ...”

“... has been wanting so much to open. When his father dies at the end of the book, it seems that Fima may at last be able to start doing something with his life, to become a ‘mensh’ as his dad always wanted him to be, to do good and avoid evil rather than just distinguish between them. The effect of all this is altogether too cosy and reminded me of a passage ...”

“... looked in the days of Senator McCarthy and of Dr Strangelove. The French Communist Party may have provided the mass base of militant anti-Americanism but, as Kuisel notes, Communist propaganda only amplified what others thought. The great ‘Coke war’ of the Fifties makes this clear, when a mighty campaign was launched to ban the soft drink and ...”

“... Christopher Hitchens may not be ‘the nearest thing to a one-man band since I.F. Stone laid down his pen’, but he comes close. For the Sake of Argument records a life of action, of being in the right place at the right time. Thomas Mann could never find the revolution: Hitchens cannot help tripping over it. This is, no doubt, the privilege of the foreign correspondent, but some are clearly more privileged than others ...”

“... Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz is the Arab Balzac, then I am inclined to think that Salman Rushdie may very well turn out to be the Muslim James Joyce. It seems to me that the same cultural forces, historical processes and social oppositions that made the emergence of an Arab Balzac probable have also made the emergence of a Muslim Joyce possible.’Some of ...”

“... letter, informing her that he no longer wished to see her. The fact that this letter survives may shed some light on Colet’s masochism, a factor which her biographer fails to underline, although the picture that emerges from her enthusiastic account is of a determined but pathetic character who did her best, against considerable odds, to emulate more ...”

“... have national ambitions; large numbers aspire to the thankless task of governing the country. It may be painful being president, it is said locally, but it is nice being an ex-president.The major damage drugs have inflicted on the Colombian political system is not the direct corruption of less important politicians, but the difficulties and distractions that ...”

“... distinguished, apparently, in the language of the Mexica? Thomas shrewdly suggests that Montezuma may have made something like a mistake in chess: a ceremonial gesture of extreme politeness, which Cortés understood as such but deliberately took, when it suited him, as a legal commitment. Thomas sees the Mexica as trapped by their rigid culture, unable to ...”

“... the fold through the baptismal ceremony, he was engaged on his master’s business much as, we may recall in Luke 2.49, this self-same master at age 12 found lagging behind at the temple in Jerusalem by his anxious parents, rebuked them saying ‘Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?’ and not, in the word of a later English ...”

“... Continental men perform on meeting and parting. British men kiss women, they kiss children, they may even kiss their dogs, but they do not kiss each other. And if anyone disagrees, let him write and tell us when he last kissed another man and kissed him tenderly. To say that Puig’s deepest concern in Kiss of the Spider Woman is to argue for tenderness is ...”