Tag: Washington

Reader’s Corner: ‘Secret City’

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

My review of Secret City, one of the summer’s most rewarding history titles, is at PopMatters:

The difference between America’s capital and its other cities, according to James Kirchick’s densely detailed, panoramic, and eye-opening new history Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, was that life in the federal seat of power during the Cold War came with an extra layer of paranoia. That fear manifested as extreme state-sponsored homophobia. Everywhere else in America, gayness was perceived as a threat to various orders (familial, religious) that lived primarily in people’s minds. But in Washington, being gay—or, more crucially, being discovered as gay—was seen as a threat to the very security of the nation….

You can hear an excerpt from the audiobook here.

Readers’ Corner: ‘This Town’ and the Gilded Trough

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Nota Bene, Omnium Gatherum, WorldLeave a comment

this town-coverAlmost the best thing about Mark Leibovich’s new Washington, DC tell-all This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!—in America’s Gilded Capital is what’s not in it. He didn’t include an index, thusly avoiding the tendency of Beltway types to cruise into bookstores and flip instantly to the index for any reference to themselves. Given the high-pitched response to his book from the corridors of power, a surprising number of those people have actually been reading the thing. It’s worth it.

My review is at PopMatters:

Mark Leibovich’s This Town is angry but funny, hitting big targets with ease while somehow avoiding the shrill tone of the screed. As the New York Times’ chief national correspondent, he has spent more time covering politics in the American capital than any human being should have to, unless serving time for a horrific crime. After 16 years covering the circular grip n’ grin of Washington politics, Leibovich has served up a heaping platter of disgust, but he’s done it with a smiley-face emoticon. After all, he’s still got to work in the place he calls “a city of beautifully busy people constantly writing the story of their own lives”…

You can watch Leibovich on The Daily Show here.

New in Theaters: ‘Split’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, OmniculturalLeave a comment

Just in time for the election comes Split: A Deeper Divide, a documentary about the nation’s partisan divide. My review is running now at Film Journal International:

The nation is hopelessly divided; Washington is broken; people only listen to news pre-slanted to their ideology; there is no room left for even-tempered discourse. We have heard all this before, which doesn’t mean that Split: A Deeper Divide, a film about the state of American political partisanship, doesn’t tackle a worthy subject. (That would be like saying that since we have already been told war is hell, every war film after All Quiet on the Western Front has been a waste of time.) But it also doesn’t mean that this film brings anything new to the topic.

Split: A Deeper Divide is playing now in limited release and will be expanded to other markets later in the month.

You can watch the trailer here: