Dylan's Early Christmas Present
Sean Wilentz is a history professor at Princeton University whose books include The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln and The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and historian-in residence at Bob Dylan's official website.
News of Bob Dylan's album of Christmas songs shocked fans. But his official historian-in-residence, Sean Wilentz, detects not a single ironic or parodic note in Christmas in the Heart-just a sincere homage to American Christmases past.
Time to Thank Obama…and Bush
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
Critics are taking aim at the president, but Mark McKinnon says with job losses slowing and recovery appearing imminent, it's time to give Obama-and, yes, his predecessor-credit for saving us from oblivion.
Why Flu Is a National Crisis
Michael Chertoff was the second Secretary of Homeland Security. He previously served as the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice. As Assistant Attorney General, he oversaw the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also formed the Enron Task Force. He is currently senior of counsel for Covington & Burling LLP's Washington, DC office and a member of the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group.
Dr. J. Bennet Waters is clinical assistant professor in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former chief of staff, Office of Health Affairs, United States Department of Homeland Security.
Treating a pandemic like a health problem isn't just bad policy, the former Homeland Security secretary warns-it's dangerous.
Great Botched Moments in Catastrophe Response
The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
As his countrymen sorted through the rubble after Monday's earthquake, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declared that they should treat their newfound homelessness like "a weekend of camping." The Daily Beast remembers some of the great insensitive moments of crisis response through the years.
I like David Leonhardt's New York Times Magazine piece, The Big Fix, because it highlights the dilemma Obama faces between short-term measures to revive a lifeless economy and longer term measures to create sustainable growth rather than...
Edward Alden is the Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His expertise includes US immigration and visa policies, US trade policy, and the impact of homeland-security policies on US economic competitiveness. He is the author of The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security Since 9/11, and is currently directing CFR’s independent task force on US immigration policy.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is a professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Jeffrey Koterba is an acclaimed syndicated political cartoonist. Since joining the Omaha World-Herald in 1989, he has been a finalist for Editorial Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society and has placed second in the National Headliner Awards. His work is distributed through King Features Syndicate to 400 newspapers nationwide, and has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post, among others.
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