Jacob Boas

Günter Grass’ revelation in Peeling the Onion that at 17 he had served in the Waffen SS came as a bolt from the blue. What stuck in people’s craw was not so much that the German novelist and Nobel Prize winner had served a murderous Nazi instrument and had waited 60 years to come clean, … Continue reading “A Quagmire of Complicity”

In the State of the Union address Bush said that failure in Iraq was not an option (not the first time the president has sounded the tocsin). "Many in this chamber," he stated, "understand that America must not fail in Iraq, because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching." Among … Continue reading “The Return of Shock and Awe?”

In June 1935, British author E. M. Forster addressed an international writers’ congress called to discuss ways of defending culture against the threat of fascism. In England, the author of A Passage to India observed, “our traditions and our liberties are closely connected,” freedom having been “praised for … several hundred of years.” English freedom … Continue reading “‘Far More Insidious’
Than Fascism”