Opinion : Yes, Barbie is a feminist — just don’t ask her creators
Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2023
Almost 30 years ago, when I researched and wrote a history of the people and ideas that led to the creation of Barbie, I had no doubt she would be as talked about in 2023 as she was in 1959, when she first appeared.

But what I never expected was the way that this plastic object, once tarred as anti-feminist, has come to be viewed as feminist, or, in any event, as an important cultural touchstone in understanding feminism.

A starry-eyed Elizabeth Taylor biography misses a golden opportunity
Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2022
I love reading biographies. I sink into an overstuffed chair and prepare two bookmarks — one for the main text and one for the source notes at the end — so I can flip back and forth between the two.

This is because a good biography is distinguished by two things: a unique take or thesis that structures the story and endnotes that explain where specific facts or quotes originated. As a critic and author of nonfiction, I confess that I swoon over endnotes. They provide ballast, reassurance and intimacy with the subject, even when the biography itself deserves skepticism. For all the qualms I had about the speculation in Benjamin Moser’s controversial Susan Sontag biography, I fell in love with his endnotes, some of which exceeded a page in length.

How a Swiss editor wrangled Patricia Highsmith’s messy diaries into a volcanic book
LA Times, November 11, 2021
The mystery novelist Patricia Highsmith dedicated one of her best-known thrillers, “Strangers on a Train,” to “all the Virginias,” and her diaries are packed with them. It was a popular name in the 1940s, especially among Highsmith’s lovers, and sorting them out was among the easier tasks faced by editor Anna von Planta in the course of a 25-year project: to reveal one of the last century’s most intriguing, complex and misanthropic authors in a single, honest and readable volume.

From Mojave to the Moon
The new space race looks to put the superrich into orbit
The American Scholar, August 23, 2021
On its surface, Test Gods tells the story of Mark Stucky, the lead test pilot for Virgin Galactic, a space tourism startup in Mojave, California, as he flies the company’s experimental space plane to the “edge of space,” 62 miles above the surface of Earth, to become one of the rare non-NASA pilots to earn astronaut wings. The book also charts the birth and ascendancy of private space travel and the brilliant if wacky characters devoted to transforming a concept from science fiction into a commercial reality.

The Deafening Choir of Oncoming Fate: On Jan Eliasberg’s “Hannah’s War”
Los Angeles Review of Books, August 07, 2020
At the beginning of Hannah’s War, a gripping new novel by director and screenwriter Jan Eliasberg, Austrian Jewish physicist Dr. Hannah Wiess is in big trouble — trouble as life-threatening as what she faced in 1938 escaping from Nazi Germany. It is April 1945. Hannah has been working at Los Alamos, secret headquarters of the Manhattan Project, an Allied collaboration on a super-weapon, a weapon to end all wars. The lab is in the New Mexico desert, not far from the Trinity Test site, where on July 16, 1945, a blinding flash would mark the first successful test of an atomic bomb.

Patti Smith’s ‘M Train’
New York times, December 04, 2015
Many people, especially those who came of age in the 1970s, view Patti Smith as an inimitable punk-rock poet with an edgy, unforgettable voice. But she is also a regular person. Her new memoir, “M Train,” can be seen as a plea to acknowledge her as one. Like the rest of us ordinary folk, she endures the frustrations and banalities of everyday life — keeping despair at bay with TV crime shows, cats and caffeine. She identifies unapologetically with the detectives on “The Killing” and “CSI: Miami.” I “adopt their ways,” she explains, “suffer their failures and consider their movements long after an episode ends, whether in real time or rerun.” Her cats are not cuddly and decorative but authentic. One wakes her in the morning by throwing up on the edge of her pillow. Her drug of choice is black coffee. Much of “M Train” takes place in different cafes, and the reader can map the effect of the substance on her imagination. With each sip her mind awakens and her ruminations deepen.

Heinlein's Female Troubles
New York times, October 02, 2005
Preparations are underway for a huge celebration to commemorate the centennial of Robert A. Heinlein, the legendary science-fiction author who in 1975 was named the first ever Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. The celebration, set for July 7, 2007, Heinlein's birthday, will consist of three separate sections: one for fans, one for academics and a third for a group not usually associated with fiction, genre or otherwise -- aerospace professionals. But Heinlein holds a unique place in this world; many scientists and engineers who built the first United States spacecraft (as well as today's space-tourism entrepreneurs) cite his novels as their inspiration. Larry Niven, a sci-fi writer, spoofs this in "The Return of William Proxmire," a time-travel yarn written in 1988. In Niven's tale, Senator Proxmire, a notorious critic of the American space program, journeys back to the 1930's, carrying present-day antibiotics. Proxmire aims to cure Heinlein of the tuberculosis that ended his Navy career and inaugurated his literary one. If Heinlein never writes a story, Proxmire reasons, the money-wasting space program can be scrubbed before it launches.