The Cost of Occupying Planet Earth

The Cost of Occupying Planet Earth

“Are you monitoring the construction?” asked the middle-aged man on a bike accompanied by his dog. “Ah, sì,” I replied in my barely passable Italian. “Bene,” he answered. Good. In front of us, a backhoe’s guttural...
The Fall of the American Empire (Writ Small)

The Fall of the American Empire (Writ Small)

History, it is said, arrives first as tragedy, then as farce. First as Karl Marx, then as the Marx Brothers. In the case of twenty-first century America, history arrived first as George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith...