“... Sedition Act of 1798, which prohibited citizens from criticising the government, his son James Lyon reprinted the biography, omitting the bits about the Deists and Socinians to let the prophet’s life story stand as a critique of the abuse of power and the suppression of dissent – with Adams as the latest in the long line of Muhammads. ‘We have ...”

“... to think tanks. Leading the rightist rising were the conservative intellectuals in the orbit of William F. Buckley’s National Review and the zealous campus activists of Young Americans for Freedom (a group ultimately larger and far more influential than the much celebrated leftist Students for a Democratic Society), as well as members of the staunchly ...”

“... roller-skating than to art (it is hung, somewhat lazily, with a few giant works such as F-111 by James Rosenquist), but it will be divided up for future shows. It is on the fifth floor that Taniguchi scales the architecture down, proportions the galleries nicely, and allows the collection of the Painting and Sculpture Department (P&S) to take over. The ...”

“... world could know itself. He was, if reluctantly, an adornment to the Prussian court of Frederick William IV, and a willing favourite of Queen Victoria. Innumerable biographies of all sizes have been published since his death, and his life is legendary though not unduly eventful. Now we have it in the kind of detail few need. Larry Todd’s book, in the ...”

“... Nato for having bombed them. Statism has its devotees in the cloister as well as the torture-room. William Edmundson’s recent Three Anarchical Fallacies argues that anarchists are committed to thinking not only that there is no obligation on citizens to obey the state, but also that belief in the legitimacy of the state entails the existence of such an ...”

“... on the story’s ideological bent. In 1993, a book called The Ghost in the Little House by William Holtz was published, claiming that a close study of the manuscripts of the novels revealed them to have been ghostwritten by Rose Wilder Lane, not only Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, but a novelist, too. ‘Holtz’s book,’ Spufford ...”

“... particularly nowadays, with so many slots on cheapo channels needing to be filled (witness James Corden and Matthew Horne of Gavin and Stacey fame, currently advertising Lesbian Vampire Killers on the bus shelters of Britain). Meyer, however, has a different answer. She says that Twilight came to her in ‘a very vivid dream’ on the night of 1 June ...”

“... several of which remain indispensable – Schlesinger was among the chief assemblers of the King James Version of American liberalism. His Cold War manual, The Vital Center, is one of the period’s shrewdest pieces of liberal propaganda. He effectively made the aspirationless politics of the 1950s look like a tough-minded creed that could sustain the ...”

“... to ‘behaviour’ and strong on obedience. Proprietary dog-food, appealingly humanised – James Spratt’s ‘Meal Fibrine Dog Cakes’, for example – was added to the household’s grocery-list. No longer just a man’s best friend or a lady’s toy, the dog was a member of the family. And if dogs were the children who never grew up, they also ...”

“... It began life as a dissertation written at Berkeley under the supervision of Thomas Laqueur and James Vernon, whose students have done so much to document the way neoliberalism shaped every aspect of British life – financial markets, town planning, culture, humanitarianism. (Sasson thanks Berkeley faculty and graduate students, and 52 ‘fellow travellers ...”

“... wine, Lacryma Christi. The experience brought out something reckless in even the most serious. William Hamilton, who did more than anyone to further vulcanology as an academic study, made the ascent during the 1767 eruption in the company of the art historian Johann Winckelmann. They were travelling with the Prussian ambassador to Vienna, who had written a ...”

“... rude, arrogant, petulant, shallow, uninformed, unethical, contrary, childish and spoiled. Prince William called him a ‘tosser’, and it’s said, though he denies it, that Prince Harry had a go at punching him out. The Yorks seemed convinced that everybody was just fussing. This attitude could be mistaken for nonchalance, but it’s more like American ...”

“... to do, and where could they go from here? ‘Supervisors at the IRS’s regional complex in Lake James township are trying to determine why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for four days before anyone asked if he was feeling all right.’ Perhaps Wallace was writing toward paradise, where the forms are also ...”

“... book is high. Hellman is not the only snotty famous person to fall under her jaded eye. James Taylor and Carly Simon, Hellman’s guests one sunny afternoon, ‘smile stiffly’ at Mahoney when she brings coffee in on a serving tray, but otherwise ignore her. Mike Nichols and John Hersey win grudging approval – the former for giving her a nice ...”

“... Government in 1972 Vanguard’s massed ranks lined up and fell in infantry-style to be reviewed by William Craig, masquerading as a latter-day Carson. In the North of Ireland, it is better not to throw stones: many political houses are made of glass. The North is, unhappily, a special case: were it not, there would have been no need to arm the police, to build ...”