Arguably: Essays

Collected essays previously published in various periodicals, 1999-2011.

Includes index.

All American. Gods of our fathers: the United States of enlightenment -- The private Jefferson -- Jefferson vs. the Muslim pirates -- Benjamin Franklin: free and easy -- John Brown: the man who ended slavery -- Abraham Lincoln: misery's child -- Mark Twain: American radical -- Upton Sinclair: a capitalist primer -- JFK: in sickness and by stealth -- Saul Bellow: the great assimilator -- Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita -- John Updike: No way ; Mr. Geniality -- Vidal Loco -- America the Banana Republic -- An Anglosphere future -- Political animals -- Old enough to die -- In defense of foxhole atheists -- In search of the Washington novel -- Eclectic Affinities. Isaac Newton: flaws of gravity -- The men who made England: Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" -- Edmund Burke: reactionary prophet -- Samuel Johnson: demons and dictionaries -- Gustave Flaubert: I'm with Stupide -- The dark side of Dickens -- Marx's journalism: the Grub Street years -- Rebecca West: things worth fighting for -- Ezra Pound: a revolutionary simpleton -- On "Animal Farm" -- Jessica Mitford's poison pen -- W. Somerset Maugham: Poor Old Willie -- Evelyn Waugh: the permanent adolescent -- P. G. Wodehouse: The Honorable Schoolboy -- Anthony Powell: An Omnivorous Curiosity -- John Buchan: Spy Thriller's Father -- Graham Greene: I'll be damned -- Death from a salesman: Graham Greene's bottle ontology -- Loving Philip Larkin -- Stephen Spender: a nice bloody fool -- Edward Upward: the captive mind -- C. L. R. James: mid off, not right on -- J. G. Ballard: the catastrophist -- Fraser's Flashman: scoundrel time -- Fleet Street's finest: from Waugh to Frayn -- Saki: where the wild things are -- Harry Potter: the boy who lived -- Amusements, annoyances, and disappointments. Why women aren't funny -- Stieg Larsson: the author who played with fire -- As American as apple pie -- So many men's rooms, so little time -- The new commandments -- In your face -- Wine drinkers of the world, unite -- Charles, Prince of Piffle -- Offshore accounts. Afghanistan's dangerous bet -- First, silence the whistle-blower -- Believe me, it's torture -- Iran's waiting game -- Long live democratic seismology -- Benazir Bhutto: daughter of destiny -- From Abbottabad to worse -- The perils of partition -- Algeria: a French quarrel -- The case of Orientalism -- Edward Said: where the Twain should have met -- The swastika and the cedar -- Holiday in Iraq -- Tunisia: at the desert's edge -- What happened to the suicide bombers of Jerusalem? -- Childhood's end: an African nightmare -- The Vietnam Syndrome -- Once upon a time in Germany -- Worse than "Nineteen Eighty-four" -- North Korea: A nation of racist dwarves -- The eighteenth brumaire of the Castro dynasty -- Hugo Boss -- Is the Euro doomed? -- Overstating Jewish power -- The case for humanitarian intervention -- Legacies of totalitarianism. Victor Serge: pictures from an inquisition -- André Malraux: one man's fate -- Arthur Koestler: the zealot -- Isabel Allende: Chile Redux -- The Persian version -- Martin Amis: lightness at midnight -- Imagining Hitler -- Victor Klemperer: survivor -- A war worth fighting -- Just give peace a chance? -- W. G. Sebald: requiem for Germany -- Words' worth. When the king saved God -- Let them eat pork rinds -- Stand up for Denmark! -- Eschew the taboo -- She's no fundamentalist -- Burned out -- Easter charade -- Don't mince words -- History and mystery -- Words matter -- This was not looting -- The "other" L-word -- The you decade -- Suck it up -- A very, very dirty word -- Prisoner of shelves.