Great
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Books
David Mamet Names the Books That Explain the Real Hollywood
What’s the last great book you read? “A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States,” by Frederick Law Olmsted. Also note: “The Life of George Brummell, Esq., Commonly Called Beau Brummell,” by Captain Jesse, and “A Diary in America,” by Frederick Marryat ...
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Books
For Kate Christensen, Bad Prose Can Never Yield a Great Book
What books are on your night stand? I’m living temporarily in a rented house in Iowa City, teaching at the Writers’ Workshop. When I arrived there was not one book in the entire place, so I made an emergency trip to the local used-book store ...
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Newyork
Why Napoleon, Once Larger Than Life, Now Feels So Small
“History,” the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, “is the biography of great men” — and of these Napoleon, whom Carlyle described as “our chief contemporary wonder,” was considered by many to be the greatest. The “little corporal” who became a ...
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World
In a Visit to a Tiny Flock in Mongolia, Pope Has an Eye on Russia and China
The pontiff arrived Friday on a trip that the Vatican said was meant to encourage the fewer than 1,500 Catholics there. But it also brings him close to two great powers that have vexed him.