Long Reads That Caught Our Eye This Week

Your weekly roundup of longreads that caught our eye. Be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray [View this email in your browser] We love to read. Here are a few longreads from around the web that caught the attention of our editors this week. Escape Artist Harry Houdini Was an Ingenious Inventor, He Just Didn't Want Anybody to Know Jackson Landers | Smithsonian.com More than just a magician, Houdini was also an actor, aviator, amateur historian and businessman --------------------------------------------------------------- It was January 27, 1908, at the Columbia Theater in St. Louis and Harry Houdini was about to debut his first theatrical performance. The great master of illusion stepped inside of an over-size milk can, sloshing gallons of water on to the stage. Houdini was about to do something that looked like a really bad idea. The can had already been poked, prodded and turned upside down to prove to the audience that there was no hole beneath the stage. Houdini was handcuffed with his hands in front of him. His hair was parted down the middle and he wore a grave expression on his face. His blue bathing suit revealed an exceptional physique. Holding his breath, he squeezed his entire body into the water-filled can as the lid was attached and locked from the outside with six padlocks. A cabinet was wheeled around the can to hide it from view. [Read More] Hope I Die Before I Get Young Joseph Epstein | Commentary Magazine The sixties, forever with us --------------------------------------------------------------- It’s a Rorschach Test: Say what you think of the 1960s and you reveal a great deal about yourself. For some the sixties were a time of splendid creative disorder, in which a rigid cultural and impossible political life underwent critical and long-needed change. The Establishment, that congeries of social, economic, and political power connections, was everywhere under attack. During these years civil rights were expanded, especially for blacks in the segregated South. Women’s rights beyond the suffrage were beginning to be recognized. Sexuality (with the important aid of the birth-control pill) was freed from its old middle-class constraints and straitjacketed morality. Windows were everywhere flung open. People could at last breath in the fullness of life. [Read More] Cultural backwash The New Criterion On the muddied state of art and identity. --------------------------------------------------------------- Politics, the late Andrew Breitbart remarked, is downstream of culture. In other words, the nature of a society’s culture influences the nature of its politics. So if you care about politics—those communal arrangements that, in Aristotle’s summary, conduce to the good for man—you will also care about culture. What should we think about the state of our culture? Should we be happy about the state of those institutions that we have entrusted to preserve and transmit the cultural aspirations of our society? --------------------------------------------------------------- [Read More] We Should Fear ‘Brave New World’ More Than We Do ‘1984’ Tom Nichols | The Federalist George Orwell’s dystopian classic, '1984,' is back in vogue—but to understand what's happening in our world, we need less Big Brother and more Aldous Huxley. --------------------------------------------------------------- George Orwell’s dystopian classic “1984” is back in vogue and selling like hotcakes. I should be happy about this, because I think it’s one of the books (in addition, of course, to the founding documents and a solid history of one’s own nation) that every citizen of a democracy should read. Instead, I’m dismayed to find that “1984” is back mostly because Americans in the Age of Trump believe it is the roadmap to the destruction of their own country. This is not only inane, it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of one of the greatest books ever written in the English language. [Read More] How to Beat Tucker Carlson Jack Shafer | Politico A step-by-step guide. --------------------------------------------------------------- Tucker Carlson's television career has crashed and burned all Halloween orange so many times in the past decade—The Spin Room; Crossfire; Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered; Tucker—and on so many networks—CNN, PBS, MSNBC—that it’s a wonder that the Fox News Channel has given him another shot with another nighttime show, Tucker Carlson Tonight. And what a shot it is. The network recently moved Carlson from the 7 p.m. slot to the cushiest position in all of prime-time cable news—9 p.m.—following and preceding ratings-leaders Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Carlson’s ratings are up compared to the program his replaced, Megyn Kelly’s The Kelly File, which we can attribute to his perseverance and the audience-growth hormone drug that is Trumpmania. Like all of the prime-time Fox hosts, Carlson has drunk deeply from the Trump flask. He may not be completely in the tank for Trump, but the administration could run for a few weeks on the fumes Carlson huffs. [Read More] Copyright © 2015 The Federalist, All rights reserved. You are receiving this e-mail because you opted in to receive e-mail updates from TheFederalist.com. Our mailing address is: The Federalist 8647 Richmond Highway Suite 618 Alexandria, VA 22309 [Add us to your address book] This email was sent to [{EMAIL}] [why did I get this?] [unsubscribe from this list] [update subscription preferences] The Federalist · 8647 Richmond Highway · Suite 618 · Alexandria, VA 22309 · USA