The Glorious American Essay

<h4>David Mikics is a columnist for Tablet magazine and the author of Bellow's People (Norton) and&nbsp;Slow Reading in a Hurried Age (Harvard/Belknap). He is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English at the University of Houston.</h4>

David Mikics

Putting America to the Test

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." — Virginia Woolf

Memoir &amp; Essay

Catch-67

Israel Versus Israel: On “Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War”

"For a long time now I haven't been I."
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Around the World

"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." — Molly Ivins

Politics

The Origin of the Jews

What Makes a Jew a Jew: On Steven Weitzman’s “The Origin of the Jews”

"You always admire what you really don't understand."
— Blaise Pascal

Religion

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." — George Bernard Shaw

History

Isaac &amp; Isaiah

The Hedgehog and the Hedgehog: Isaiah Berlin and Isaac Deutscher

David Mikics is a columnist for Tablet magazine and the author of Bellow's People (Norton) and&nbsp;Slow Reading in a Hurried Age (Harvard/Belknap). He is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English at the University of Houston.