The New York Times Presents the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, Selected by 503 Novelists, Poets & Critics

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For long­time read­ers of Amer­i­can book jour­nal­ism, scrolling through the New York Times Book Review’s just-pub­lished list of the 100 best books of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry will sum­mon dim mem­o­ries of many a once-unig­nor­able crit­i­cal fuss. At one time or anoth­er over the past 25 years, some of us felt as if we could…

Francis Ford Coppola Picks His Favorite Criterion Movies & Gives Advice to Filmmakers

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Upon step­ping into the hal­lowed Cri­te­ri­on Clos­et, stocked with hun­dreds of that cinephile video label’s finest releas­es, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la speaks of a direc­tor who “believed in a film he want­ed to make, and used his entire for­tune, because the financ­ing sys­tem of the time would­n’t finance it. And it came out and it was…

Bob Dylan Reads “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” On His Holiday Radio Show (2006)

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Allow me to name just a few of the peo­ple I want to hear host­ing and curat­ing radio shows—former Sex Pis­tols’ singer John Lydon, for­mer Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer, for­mer Woody Guthrie imper­son­ator Bob Dylan.…

Luck­i­ly for me, this ain’t just fan­ta­sy base­ball; at var­i­ous times, and with vary­ing lev­els of com­mit­ment, each of these…

How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened

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A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas uses a cast of ama­teur child voice actors, deals with the theme of sea­son­al depres­sion, and cul­mi­nates in the recita­tion of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the spe­cial that CBS had expect­ed, to say noth­ing of its spon­sor, the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny.…

How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Last Supper: A Deep Dive Into a Masterpiece

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When Leonar­do da Vin­ci was 42 years old, he had­n’t yet com­plet­ed any major pub­licly view­able work. Not that he’d been idle: in that same era, while work­ing for the Duke of Milan, Ludovi­co Sforza, he “devel­oped, orga­nized, and direct­ed pro­duc­tions for fes­ti­val pageants, tri­umphal pro­ces­sions, masks, joust­ing tour­na­ments, and plays, for which he…