MRS. ASTOR’S NEW YORK: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age, by Eric Homberger Yale University Press. 336 pages. $29.95 “At the end there was little more than the boundless civility of a hostess,” reads Eric Homberger’s eulogy for Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, doyenne of New York society at the last turn of the century. In fact, in the end there was something more akin to the last days of Mrs. Haversham. Following her “severe nervous breakdown” in 1906 Mrs. Astor continued to shop, “but at the instructions of her family the goods were never delivered.” She continued to Read More
Small Ball: Obama’s Paltry Second-Term Agenda [Opinion]
Having won a (temporary) victory in our now-endless budget battle, President Obama is now free to pursue the agenda that he’s laid out for his second term. Read More
Cliff Diving: The Austerity Debate is Looking Hollower Every Day
Wow, that was a close one, wasn’t it? We just missed going over that fiscal cliff! Read More
How Negotiating With Gun Advocates Just Gives Them More Ammunition
Last year I had the opportunity to review Candice Millard’s excellent history of the Garfield assassination, Destiny of the Republic. President Garfield’s killer Read More
Four Men in a Room: How the Independent Democratic Conference Did New Yorkers Wrong
The millennium arrived sometime during the day of December 4, when New York State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein led his spanking new Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) Read More
The Zen Move: Here’s Why Obama Should Fold in Fiscal Follies
The conventional wisdom insists that President Obama has all the leverage right now over the Republicans in their negotiation for a “grand bargain” to close the budget deficit. Read More
Peace Be Upon Us: A Holiday Reflection
This is my version of a standard holiday column, inspired by the hope that we can rise above all the horror and suffering in the world today and live in peace and goodwill. Read More
Coney Baloney: The Plot to Turn City’s Iconic Wonderland Into a Chain-Store Wasteland
Peer under the tent flap of our splendid new civic order, and you’re guaranteed to see a disturbing sight: all the same failed policies of the past, lovingly preserved in formaldehyde. Read More
Whose Sacrifice Is It Anyway? The So-Called Grand Bargain Would Fleece the Middle Class
So now that the election is done at last, we can get down to the hard work of striking a “grand bargain” on the budget by cutting spending and raising taxes, and thus avoid the looming “fiscal cliff.” Read More
Let the Great Work Begin: Will New York Heed Sandy’s Wake Up Call?
The great thing about living in New York used to be that you didn’t have to give a damn about the natural world. Read More