Recent Posts
Featured posts
Literary trips
Travel Fictions
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A review of Once Upon a Time Proletarian, by the Chinese novelist and director Xiaolu Guo, and a review of her new movie, "She, a Chinese," starring Lu Huang (in the photo).
On the 10th anniversary of Paul Bowles's death, Paul Theroux remembers the writer and traveller who set him on his way.
Ed Ruscha has dedicated a new project to Kerouac’s “On the Road."
The November issue of Playboy features French actor Gilles Marini, who has appeared in Sex and the City and Dancing With the Stars, in a racy fashion pictorial featuring men’s styles inspired by Paul Schrader’s film, “The Comfort of Strangers.”
The Travel Habit
On the Road in the Thirties
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Jonathan Raban on Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits by NYU professor Linda Gordon and Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field by Anne Whiston Spirn
The WPA American Guide Series, in the news, 75 years later.
Happy Birthday, Wizard of Oz, 70 years old this month.
Soul of a People, a new documentary about the Federal Writers Project.
Around the world
Travel
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Are Americans Afraid of Overseas Travel? Brave New Traveler looks at the world according to Americans.
Landscape, architecture, environment
A Sense of Place
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The Mannahatta Project: Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city?
No Impact Man, first the blog, then the book (reviewed by the New Yorker), and coming soon, the movie.
Walker Evans, the great American photographer, was also an avid collector of American postcards, which he considered "folk documents"—examples, in other words, of American vernacular. The Times reviews an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a while back.
Around town
New York
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With a recession upon us, Gridskipper offers some tips for cheap eats in NYC, where you can "nosh for next to nothing."
My New York: Fall Favorites: Notable locals share what they like to do in the city in the fall.
Around campus
NYU
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Time Magazine names John Sexton #2 in its list of top ten college presidents.
NYU’s bookstore on Washington Place will be relocated in the Spring to the ground floor of 726 Broadway, with room to spare for another Think Coffee branch.
A documentary about student loan defaults, the movie website, and an article about the problem. And here's a post about the "value of a NYU education"—and the rising costs.
NYU to open Tel Aviv program amid controversy.
Armchair travel
Books
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The top 20 travel books of the past century, with reader comments on what's missing from the list.
An interview with Alain de Botton about his new book.
On the death of Lévi-Strauss, a reappraisal of Tristes Tropiques, which begins “I hate traveling and explorers.”
The NY Times reviews Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Recent additions
Video
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Featured video
In the gallery
On the bookshelf
Library
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