Thomas Philbrick on a concert by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Recent stories of note: “Vargas Llosa Stood for Freedom Against the Nationalist Tide” Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street ...

Last night, the Philadelphia Orchestra played the Symphony No. 6 in A minor of Gustav Mahler. The venue: Carnegie Hall. The ...

An accusatory tone is not, perhaps, the best way to predispose a reader in an author’s favor, to win friends and influence people, especially when the reader is innocent of what he is accused of.

Truth is that which hurries on the break-up of the colonialist regime; it is that which promotes the emergence of the nation; it is all that protects the natives, and ruins the foreigners. In this ...

What is conservatism? That is a good question, one that has been answered in many ways: a defense of the status quo, or of tradition; gradualism in politics; a preference for order over change; an ...

Clashing civilizations, rival great powers, cutting-edge technology: we have been here before, as Marcus Bull, a professor at the University of North Carolina, shows in The Great Siege of Malta, his ...

Lightning flashes that cross the mind and illuminate so quickly they are hardly noticed. In such cases, more is seen than retained. Thus, whoever does not observe himself carries within him some ...

The modern state is built on the rationalist conceit that society is best organized with detailed codes, elaborate procedures, and rights for almost anything. Federal law and regulation comprises ...

It is a mission of Riccardo Muti to acquaint the world with Italian music. But is such a mission necessary? Italian music is some of the most famous music in the world: “La donna è mobile,” the “Anvil ...

Taking literary “style” in its strictest sense, as word choice and syntax, consider what C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) wrote of his beloved Edmund Spenser: “His work is one, like a growing thing, with ...

Buena Vista Social Club (at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre) isn’t the first Broadway musical whose lyrics I found difficult to make out, but it turns out that the songs in this one are in a different ...