To London, with Love: Nights Out in SoHo

Ivan Lett— Judith Walkowitz is my kind of historian. She’s interested in the same kinds of topics as I am: cultural history, social history, women’s history, and applies them to my favorite time and place: early twentieth-century London. Walkowitz’s new book, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London, published this week, covers the rapid, and even [...]

To London, with Love: Springing for Politics

Ivan Lett— I’m no political junkie, just a book publishing historian who comes away from the glory of Britannia every so now and then to find the ever-changing world around me to be…well, ever-changing. When news of the revolution in Egypt broke last winter, I was  still in a holiday reading regimen: gifts that I [...]

To London, with Love: Dazzled and Deceived by Nature

Ivan Lett— Before I was seduced by the glitz and glam of book publishing, a little-known fact was that I wanted to be a geneticist. Call me crazy, but to this day if someone starts talking polymorphisms and alleles, I start foaming at the geeky mouth. Misanthrope that I am known to be more often [...]

To London, with Love: All the Downton Rage

Ivan Lett— Finally, I win. I win every time the newest craze comes in from across the pond, but the Guinness World Book of Record-holding Downton Abbey has taken things to a new level. Following the American premiere of the second season this past Sunday, the New York Times released a list of publishers’ books, [...]

To London, with Love: For the Fighter, Not Your Lover

Ivan Lett— Despite recent posts, I am not inclined to change the title of this column to “War!”, as one e-mail suggestion read…. If I seem stuck on the topic of recent books on World War II, it is primarily because: Other WWII books I’ve read never consider a Germanic or Japanese perspective; everything is [...]

To London, with Love: An Island Changes the World

Ivan Lett— Continuing my reading on World War II, it’s almost a needless point to make that December 7 was arguably the turning point of conflict. The morning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has been recreated and dramatized many times over as one of the most identifiable moments of the American twentieth century, [...]

To London, with Love: For the Fashionably Late

Ivan Lett— It has been observed many times, many ways, how late the United States entered World War II, much to the chagrin of its European friends fighting the Axis Powers. My favorite recap comes from Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill, where he imitates the arrival of a US cavalryman, remarking “I love the smell [...]

To London, with Love: Lost at Sea

Ivan Lett— Here in New Haven, the memory of La Amistad and its historic court trial pervades the memory of our coastline. Popular recreations of the slave ship’s story, such as the 1997 Spielberg film or the ship replica at Mystic Seaport, remind us of the horrors of slavery and the humanity denied to slaves [...]

To London, with Love: My Philosophy

Ivan Lett— I’m unsure of the consequences for admitting that I graduated college with an abundance of credits and not a single one was a philosophy course, though I did more than half-faithfully audit a great one on metaphysics. Leaving aside the study of logic, the kind of abstract thinking I associate with philosophy is [...]

To London, with Love: Bottled Up Memories from El Anatsui

“El Anatsui”, an exhibition organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, on view now until October 16, displays the intricate metal work of the Ghanaian-born sculptor and his use of bottleneck foil wrappers to invoke the legacies of postcolonialism.