Although many Americans heard Barack Obama's inauguration speech, they probably weren't listening for plyptotons and catachresis — but Geoff Nunberg was.
Robot soldiers are no longer just the stuff of sci-fi fantasy. As technological warfare expert P.W. Singer explains in his new book, Wired For War, some military tasks previously assigned to humans are now being handled by machines.
Critic-at-large John Powers reviews a newly-released DVD of Roberto Rossellini's 1966 film The Taking of Power by Louis XIV. Originally made for Italian television, the costume-drama follows a rocky transfer of power amidst the lavish court rituals of 17th-century France.
Natasha Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her book Native Guard. Her parents had an interracial marriage while it was still illegal in Mississippi, and Tretheway's poetry often draws on her childhood as a biracial child in the south.
Street artist Shepard Fairey created the iconic red, white and blue Obama illustration that became the unofficial poster of the campaign. Although his campaign poster never became official, Fairey has been commissioned to design the official poster for the inauguration.
Eric Foner, author of Our Lincoln, talks about the era following the Civil War in which former slaves were promised equal rights and citizenship. Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University.
Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in the post-civil rights era, son of a publisher and former Black Panther; he's a contributing editor and blogger for The Atlantic magazine and author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, 2 Sons, and An Unlikely Road to Manhood.
Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) became part of the civil-rights movement while he was a teenager. From 1963 to 1966, he chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And he became a close associate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Lewis has been a congressman since 1987.
Director George Tillman Jr.'s Notorious, which follows the life and death of the rapper Biggie Smalls, opens in theaters this weekend. David Edelstein has a review.
What's new on TV? A slew of new television episodes and series are premiering this weekend. David Bianculli reviews a sampling, including Friday Night Lights, The L Word, Big Love, Flight of the Conchords and the premiere of The United States of Tara.
Rock historian Ed Ward considers pop music produced at Ardent Studios in Memphis in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Much of the music wasn't heard any farther than the city limits.
Transportation expert Daniel Sperling estimates that the world's car population — which currently stands at 1 billion vehicles — is likely to double in the next 20 years. Sperling is the co-author (with Deborah Gordon) of Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability.
Paul Eisenstein reports from the Detroit Auto Show on the state of the auto industry. Eisenstein has covered cars for over 30 years; he currently reports for the independent news service The Detroit Bureau.
Jeb Loy Nichols has recorded a half-dozen albums since the late 1990s and before that, fronted the band The Fellow Travelers. Rock critic Ken Tucker says Nichols' new album, called Parish Bar, coheres as one of his more adventurous musical experiments.
Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper chronicles the rise of the record industry — and its subsequent digital-age collapse — in his new book, Appetite For Self-Destruction.
Macroeconomist Dean Baker sees opportunity in the current economic crisis. In a recent editorial for The Guardian, Baker recommended that President-elect Barack Obama boost the economy by spending on national health insurance.
After 44 years as a newspaper man, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. makes his debut as a fiction writer. His new novel, Rules Of The Game, features an investigative reporter on the beat of a hotly contested presidential election.
