MJ AndersenApr 23 min readEdvard Munch: Technically Speaking Review: Classic Themes, Vibrant Variations, The Wall Street JournalEdvard Munch, “Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones),” 1906–08. Oil on canvas. Harvard Art Museums Cambridge Mass At his death, in 1944,...
MJ AndersenFeb 17, 20233 min readThree books tackle the complexities of friendship, through life and death, The Boston GlobeFebruary 17, 2023 It is sometimes lamented that literature says too little about friendship. Lately though, counterexamples seem to be...
MJ AndersenJan 29, 20233 min read‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ and other accounts of the oppression of women in Iran, The Boston GlobeJanuary 29, 2023 Shirin Ebadi’s troubles may have begun on the playground, when she discovered an inner compulsion to defend underdogs....
MJ AndersenNov 27, 20223 min readPhilosophers tackle a timely question: Can forgiveness and anger coexist? The Boston Sunday GlobeSunday, November 27, 2022 Amid the ongoing tide of mass shootings, the case of Dylann Roof remains chillingly distinct. One evening in...
MJ AndersenOct 30, 20223 min readRelated Reading: Three new books look at the roots of today's conservatism, The Boston Sunday GlobeOctober 30, 2022 How did we wind up with Trump? The question should have been handed off to historians long ago. Instead, we wake to it...
MJ AndersenSep 25, 20223 min readRELATED READING: Two books on pandemic parenting, The Boston Sunday GlobeAnya KamenetzWILL O'HARE
MJ AndersenJul 31, 20223 min readRelated Reading: A city of one’s own, The women who found themselves by moving to New YorkJuly 31, 2022 Several years ago, my former Providence Journal colleague Carol McCabe mentioned that she had been one of the young women...
MJ AndersenJun 26, 20223 min readTwilight of the white guys, The Boston Sunday GlobeJune 26, 2022 John Cheever knew a vanishing world when he saw one. In a memorable introduction, he linked his collected stories to a time...
MJ AndersenMay 29, 20223 min readOn 'Stalingrad' and Stalin, The Boston Sunday GlobeMay 29, 2022 Repressive states tend to like their authors best when they are safely dead. Joseph Stalin admired Nikolai Gogol but...
MJ AndersenApr 22, 20223 min readRelated Reading: On the increasing danger of cyberattacks, The Boston Sunday GlobeApril 24, 2022 One day in 2007, Russian hackers took down key online services in Estonia. This action, now generally recognized as the...
MJ AndersenMar 27, 20223 min readOn Women’s History Month, books about Shirley Chisholm and by Stacey Abrams, The Boston Sunday GlobeMarch 27, 2022 Fifty years ago, Shirley Chisholm announced her candidacy for president of the United States. The response was widely,...
MJ AndersenFeb 27, 20223 min readRelated Reading: On rural America, The Boston Sunday GlobeFebruary 27, 2022 Who should speak for or about rural Americans is perennially up for grabs. For a while, it was J.D. Vance, whose...
MJ AndersenJan 29, 20223 min readFour Takes: On water, too little or too much, The Boston Sunday GlobeJanuary 30, 2022 Lucas Bessire suffers from what Elizabeth Hardwick has called the stain of place. He tried running away from home to...
MJ AndersenDec 26, 20213 min readFour Takes: On good food and sweet homesDecember 26, 2021 Show of hands: who’s up for another sheet-pan recipe? Just as I thought. In the roughly two years since the pandemic...
MJ AndersenNov 21, 20213 min readOn spycraft: New books take on the CIA, The Boston Sunday GlobeNovember 21, 2021 Since its creation in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency has proven an elusive symbol of the nation’s identity: by...
MJ AndersenOct 23, 20213 min readFour Takes: On college, opportunity, and merit, The Boston Sunday GlobeOctober 24, 2021 After days of immersing myself in the state of US college admissions, the story I could not shake was this: In 2015,...
MJ AndersenSep 28, 20213 min readFour Takes: to save the oceans, fall in love with them, The Boston GlobeSeptember 27, 2021 Sometimes the impulse to seek our own image in nature runs aground. Consider the anglerfish. The female — beady-eyed,...
MJ AndersenJul 25, 20213 min readFour Takes: On Maine, The Boston Sunday GlobeJuly 25, 2021 In July, the summer people fan out to homes in Maine. For those who can only fantasize, books set in the state offer a fine...
MJ AndersenJun 27, 20213 min readFour Takes: 50 years after the Pentagon Papers, does a free press still function?June 27, 2021 Fifty years ago, on June 27, Daniel Ellsberg distributed his last remaining copies of what are now known as the Pentagon...
MJ AndersenMay 23, 20213 min readFour Takes: Four books that find us heading West, The Boston Sunday GlobeMay 23, 2021 In the 1830s, curious Americans paid 25 cents apiece to see Joice Heth, an elderly Black woman reputed to have been George...
