From The Atlantic Monthly, a review of It's in the Bag: What Purses Reveal—-And Conceal; Bags: A Lexicon of Style; and How to Be a Budget Fashionista: The Ultimate Guide to Looking Fabulous for Less. The Supergirl Syndrome: The marketing-driven message of the perfect girl—smart, skinny, pretty, athletic and loved by all—is a model of perfection that's hard to live up to. Can't girls just be free to be? Men, your armpit excretions affect women more than you might think.
From Metapsychology Book Reviews, a review of Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking. A review of Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner and Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential To Transform Ourselves. Thinking about why we think about thinking: Don't ask philosophers to talk shop, warns Jonathan Wolff. Are you book-clubbable? Far from providing easy access to literature, book clubs are about as exclusive as they come.
Internet threatens dictionary sales: Rise of online resources sees reference book sales fall. From USA Today, an article on things that changed the Internet over the last 25 years. Here are the latest Webby Awards nominees & winners.
From Media Matters, what does David Broder's exalted position atop the media food chain say about the state of political journalism? Oedipus & Podhoretz: His father fought Stalinists. But for Post edit-page chief John Podhoretz, sitcoms are the battleground of freedom. Why do right-wing pundits hate Rosie O'Donnell so much? Because she was the lone ardently progressive voice in corporate news programming. Eric Alterman & Matthew Yglesias defend the netroots against Jonathan Chait. Newspapers and blogs: Closer than we think? A content analysis of newspapers and blogs covering the Iraq War illuminates differences, and similarities, in sourcing. From PS: Political Science & Politics, a symposium on The State of the Editorial Cartoon.
