After twenty-four years at the helm of the institution that he has radically transformed, Sonoma State University President, Ruben Armiñana, will retire on July 1, 2016. But first he has to run a kind of…
Posts published by “Jonah Raskin”
When I was in college, I learned about ambiguity by reading the novels and the essays of Henry James, the Anglo-American author who was born in New York and who died in London, England in…
Nothing – not drones, bombs, apps, or awards – stops the white male North American intellectual in his quest to nail the nature of the times in which we live. Super-intellectual soars again and again,…
Every since the abominable attacks on Paris I’ve been emailing my closest French friends, Jean-Francois and Virginie, for first-hand news of the tragedy that unfolded there. From what I understand, they’ve been carrying on as…
Remember the War in Vietnam? Indeed, how could anyone forget napalm, tiger cages and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, or the rag-tail army of pacifists, GIs, hippies, self-styled revolutionaries, Catholics, Buddhists, rock bands, and just…
Forester Greg Giusti doesn’t fight fires with water, hoses and aerial assaults. He didn’t fight the Valley Fire or any of the other conflagrations — at Elk and Jerusalem — that swept across Lake County…
Perfect or near-perfect matches between author and subject are rare, indeed, in the world of publishing. Jay Parini’s Empire of Self, a new biography of Gore Vidal, is one of them. A long-time biographer as…