Henry David Thoreau

July Short Fuses — Materia Critica

July 3, 2023
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

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Author Interview: Robert A. Gross on “The Transcendentalists and Their World”

December 10, 2021
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“Concord was actually surprisingly representative of Massachusetts, New England, and maybe even the North in the 19th century. In learning about Concord, you learn about the making of modern America.”

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Film Review: Life Without Principle

March 16, 2012
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Director Johnnie To has a playfulness found in much Hong Kong cinema. He has found a different way to unfold a story, making clear how money and greed can inform everything, but with plenty of room for humor and for good fortune.

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Culture Vulture: Tracking the Transcendentalists

May 25, 2010
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There are dozens of excellent books about the Alcotts, Emersons, Thoreau, and Hawthorne but reading them can’t beat actually walking through the places where the people actually lived. By Helen Epstein “We are all going to be made perfect,” wrote ten-year-old Louisa May Alcott in June of 1843, “This day we left Concord in the…

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