Dawn Chan
What propels us through difficult, densely written texts? When I’m neck-deep in a challenging theoretical tome, I’m usually grumpy and seeking someone to blame—whether it’s the author for being abstruse or myself for being knuckleheaded. But something keeps me barreling forward, too: usually, the implicit faith that relief awaits around the corner. That relief might come in the form of prismatic clarity, as when an enigmatic sentence finally breaks open. Or in the form of poetic ambiguity—in a gradual capitulation to a haze of resonance. Either way, the fuel is that implicit faith—a faith that allowing an author’s thoughts into Judith E. Stein Judith E. Stein’s book Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art examines the life of the art dealer who founded the fabled Green Gallery and was an early champion of artists including Mark di Suvero, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Donald Judd. Stein’s investigation—built on interviews with Bellamy’s friends, family, colleagues, and lovers—spans from Bellamy’s Cincinnati childhood as the son of an American father and a Chinese mother, to his time in Provincetown with members of the beat generation, to his later interactions with collectors (and Green Gallery backers) Robert and 
Few living philosophers’ names elicit quite as much public recognition and scorn as that of the utilitarian ethicist Peter Singer, who has argued in support of animal liberation, euthanasia, and even, in some extreme cases, infanticide. In the 1990s, when Singer’s mother, Cora, fell victim to Alzheimer’s, it was with almost vituperative glee that critics seized on the fact that Singer and his siblings spent huge amounts of money on her care, insinuating that he’d betrayed his own morality-by-the-numbers arguments.