Renaissance Pundit's Posterous

Confronting The Beautiful Mess of Adult Life

Yeshiva student murdered in Ukraine

Let we forget what we left behind, a gruesome murder like this in Ukraine reminds us that anti-Semitism is at its highest documented level TODAY since 1939. Regardless of his alleged link to organized crime, the timing and atrocity of this yeshiva student's kidnapping and murder on Hitler's birthday leave no doubt about motive. RIP, Aryeh Leib.

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=175070

Posted May 9, 2010

Irène Némirovsky’s Life and Stories - NYTimes.com

The trouble with overusing stereotyped characters in prose becomes apparent through the circumstances of Nemirovsky's career and tragic death at the cruel hands of irony...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/books/review/Prose-t.html

Posted May 9, 2010

Martin, Maggie, and Me | Culture | Vanity Fair

Brilliant account of literary London on the 70s by the one and only Hitch (Christopher Hitchens, that is, not Will Smith, damn it)...

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/06/hitchens-201006?currentPage=1

Posted May 6, 2010

SPIEGEL Interview with Libyan Leader Moammar Gadhafi: 'Switzerland Should be Dissolved as a State' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Qaddafi is brilliance, personified (in a buffoon's guise). Read this for a great laugh (or 20). What hilarious accusations this guy makes!

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,692626,00.html


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Yuri Kruman
J.D., 2009
Cardozo School of Law

Posted May 3, 2010

Op-Ed Contributor - Meet the Real Villain of the Financial Crisis. - NYTimes.com

The truth is plain. Modern finance is an opaque mess by design and needs to be cleaned up through smart and optimally real-time regulatory brawn (wishful thinking in DC). Goldman isn't nearly the only one to blame, as ratings agencies and counterparties who failed to assess risk properly certainly share in bringing about the near- collapse of the entire system. Congressional jingoism and bloviation is not going to fix the very real gaps in legislative and regulatory oversight pending in both Houses of Congress. Strong lobbying by the entire financial colossus will likely keep changes to a toothless minimum, sadly, or at worst, will empower overzealous regulators.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/opinion/27mclean.html

parisians: an adventure history of paris by graham robb - bookforum.com / the daily review

Excellent compilation of adventure stories from Parisian history to illustrate its enigmas and evolution over the centuries.

http://www.bookforum.com/review/5608

reading the reich - bookforum.com / in print

Some disturbing revelations about the remnants of Hitler's library (large parts are in the Library of Congress), as well as surprises about his encyclopedic knowledge developed out of a high school dropout's inferiority complex, but at the same time, his lack of ability to think critically through those books.

Healy surprising, bur still eerie to think how much a man's reading list can become state doctrine within a few short years...


http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_04/2981

Irène Némirovsky - New Biography and Short Stories - NYTimes.com

More details have come out about Irene Nemirovsky's life from correspondences and unearthed writings, to suggest she foolishly thought herself worlds apart from a "shtetl Jew," an assertion to which Petain and his henchmen did not take favorably in deporting her to Auschwitz, unfortunately.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/books/26nemirovsky.html

FT.com / Books / Essays - Mark Twain: ‘the true father of all American literature’ ?

Some myth-busting and accounts-taking from the life of America's greatest literateur and humorist of all time, Samuel Longhorn Clemens.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e468e614-48d9-11df-8af4-00144feab49a.html