From National Review, Christopher Wolfe on the cultural preconditions of American liberty. Farewell, Facebook: Why one super-connected internet enthusiast decided it was time to pull the plug. A review of The Anatomy of Fashion: Dressing the Body from the Renaissance to Today by Susan J. Vincent. Stop using the labels "good thing" and "bad thing," advises Srikumar Rao in his new book, Happiness at Work. "The desert of Arabia is America's last frontier”: The story of the cowboy oilmen who branded the Gulf and the Bedouin who followed in their footsteps. From The New York Review of Magazines, they say all publicity is good publicity — if so, these magazine photo spreads are as good as it gets; and what if Vogue and Vice had restaurants? It has become conventional wisdom in social psychology that people's names help determine their choice of spouse, hometown and occupation — but a pair of new studies is challenging this notion (and more). Valuing $0: Measuring creative gifts, from worthless to priceless. An excerpt from The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law by Deborah L. Rhode. The introduction to Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato's Gorgias and the Politics of Shame by Christina H. Tarnopolsky. A look at the world's most bizarre man-made disasters. The man behind Abercrombie & Fitch: Mike Jeffries turned a moribund company into a multibillion-dollar brand by selling youth, sex and casual superiority — not bad for a 61-year-old in flip-flops. Daniel Nester reviews A Common Pornography by Kevin Sampsell. Brevity has offered a forum wherein Patrick Madden, past Brevity author, founder/keeper of the extraordinary Quotidiana website, and author of the essay collection Quotidiana, can admit his various nonfiction transgressions.
