Alexander C. Kafka is a journalist and photographer in Bethesda, Maryland. A senior editor for The Chronicle of Higher Education, he previously worked as a reporter and editor for Newsday and other newspapers, and as senior press officer for the Brookings Institution. He has written about books and the arts for The American Prospect, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, The Chicago Tribune, DC Theatre Scene, Oxford American, Washington City Paper, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, and other publications. He has also written three screenplays — Specimen Days, Dali, and Contents Under Pressure — and adapted Specimen Days, about the later years of Walt Whitman, for the stage.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
Resistance Is a State of Mind: On Lynne Olson’s “Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler”
Alexander C. Kafka uncovers “Madame Fourcade’s Secret War,” a “tense new page-turner” by Lynne Olson....
The Two Scapellatos in “The Made-Up Man”
Alexander C. Kafka discovers an author at war with himself in Joseph Scapellato’s “The Made-Up Man.”...
Hard Time: On Joyce Carol Oates’s “Hazards of Time Travel”
Alexander C. Kafka ventures through Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel....
America the Dysfunctional
A gloomy take on the American future by journalist, lawyer, and entrepreneur Steven Brill....
James Wood’s Subtle Subversions
Alexander C. Kafka finds James Wood’s “Upstate” a stirring novel of quiet, careful craftsmanship....
Meta Barbra
People tend to love Barbra Streisand or hate her or both at the same time depending on the day and the project and the era and the mood....
Seeds of Grass
The origins of American Bohemia in — where else — Greenwich Village, before the Civil War....
