Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99 per year.
Subscribe for Full Access

Six Questions

One question more than five; twelve fewer than eighteen.

Stripping Bare the Body: Six Questions for Mark Danner

As a war correspondent, Mark Danner knows few equals. He writes with a literary flair, and he has an abiding focus on the plight of civilians rather than the strategies…

Read more

Inside Jung’s Red Book: Six Questions for Sonu Shamdasani

The long-awaited publication of C.G. Jung’s Red Book is causing ripples in the world of psychology. Notwithstanding its enormous folio size and its hefty price tag, the book is already…

Read more

Six Questions for Joe Berlinger about Crude

Ted Trautman contributed reporting for this interview. Joe Berlinger is the director and producer of the new movie “Crude: The Real Price of Oil,” which tells the story of an…

Read more

The People v. The Torture Team: Six Questions for Law & Order’s René Balcer

“It is not disloyal to hold our officials to the highest standards of conduct.” That statement comes from a prosecutor near the end of the trial of a group of…

Read more

Straussophobia: Six Questions for Peter Minowitz

Many critics–some writing in Harper’s—have seen Leo Strauss as the thinker behind the modern neoconservative movement and have blamed him for the neocons’ sins. Now Peter Minowitz, a self-described Straussian…

Read more

Six Questions for Peter Maass on the Violent Twilight of Oil

Luke Mogelson contributed reporting for this interview. Peter Maass, a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, is the author of Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, which…

Read more

Republican Gomorrah: Six Questions for Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal launched his journalistic career with an award-winning exposé of the deaths of hundreds of young women in the Mexican border city of Juárez. More recently, he has specialized…

Read more

Six Questions for Wallace Shawn

Obie Award–winning playwright and actor Wallace Shawn has just published a new book–a collection of articles and interviews entitled Essays. Suffused with Shawn’s signature irony and an inimitable style that…

Read more

Six Questions for David Cole, Author of The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable

Georgetown law professor David Cole, a leading civil liberties advocate in relation to the “War on Terror,” has a new book out next week. The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable…

Read more

Six Questions for Derek S. Jeffreys, Author of Spirituality and the Ethics of Torture

While a great volume of material has been published about torture from a political or legal perspective, there have been relatively few publications addressing the spiritual and moral dimensions of…

Read more

Musicophilia: Six Questions for Oliver Sacks

Columbia University Professor Oliver Sacks is probably the country’s best known neurologist. But his greatest talent may be his ability to make the complexities of neurological disorders understandable to laymen…

Read more

Six Questions for Jack Balkin on the Entrenchment of the National Surveillance State

Last Friday an unclassified version of a congressionally commissioned inspectors general report was released. The report looks into the surveillance programs of the Bush Administration and checks them against the…

Read more

Six Questions for Ariel Cohen on Obama’s Efforts to Restart U.S.–Russian Relations

Today Barack Obama wraps up a lengthy visit to Russia in which arms control has been a focal point, and he moves on to the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy.…

Read more

The Jump Artist: Six Questions for Austin Ratner

Austin Ratner has just made his debut as a novelist with a remarkable work based on the tragedy-filled life of Philippe Halsman, the iconic American photographer of the post-war years.…

Read more

Six Questions for David Beito, Author of Black Maverick

T.R.M. Howard was not everyone’s idea of a civil rights hero, and his accomplishments have been widely neglected. But as historians David Beito and Linda Royster Beito demonstrate in their…

Read more

Six Questions for Cynthia Smith on the Legality of Force-feeding at Guantánamo

Correction, June 11, 2009: Scott Horton writes in to point out that Ward Casscells’s term as assistant secretary of defense ended April 28. I had written that my interview took…

Read more

Six Questions for Rashid Khalidi, Author of Sowing Crisis

Columbia University historian Rashid Khalidi has been a forceful critic of the Bush Administration’s heavy-handed conduct in the Middle East, often drawing on modern historical parallels to argue that the…

Read more

The Chartist’s Plight: Six Questions for Sha Yexin

“The Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters and uncountable struggles across these same years, now include many who see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal…

Read more

The Blogosphere Thriller: Six Questions for Barry Eisler, Author of Fault Line

Barry Eisler started his professional life as a covert operations agent for the CIA, transformed himself into a Silicon Valley intellectual property lawyer and entrepreneur. He’s now best-known for his…

Read more

Six Questions for Ian Bremmer, Author of Fat Tail

Just in time for the global financial crisis, EurasiaGroup president Ian Bremmer has a new book. Co-authored with Preston Keat, it is called Fat Tail, and it deals with one…

Read more

Six Questions for Juan Cole, Author of Engaging the Muslim World

Juan Cole is one of the nation’s leading historians focusing on the Middle East. Over the past decade he has emerged as a commentator on Middle East policy and a…

Read more

Six Questions for Karen Greenberg, Author of The Least Worst Place

Karen Greenberg, the director of NYU’s Center on Law and Security, took a close-up look at the first hundred days in the life of the detention center at Guantanamo. What…

Read more

Six Questions for Deborah Nelson on Vietnam War Crimes, and Why They Matter Now

Deborah Nelson is the Carnegie Visiting Professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland at College Park. She is the author of the new book, The War…

Read more

Prepare for the Robot Wars: Six questions for P.W. Singer, author of Wired for War

P. W. Singer of the Brookings Institution labors at the intersection of the military, defense contractors, and the world of high tech. In his latest work, Wired for War, Singer…

Read more

Six Questions for Edwin Burrows, Author of Forgotten Patriots

Edwin Burrows, a professor at Brooklyn College, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for co-authoring Gotham, the authoritative account of the history of New York City up to the point…

Read more

Six Questions for Louis Fisher, Author of The Constitution and 9/11

The Bush Administration has labored to convince the American public that the imperial powers it assumed in the wake of 9/11 are consistent with historical precedent, and in so doing…

Read more

A False Story: Six Questions for Ken Waltzer

In my previous post, I discussed Herman Rosenblat’s memoir An Angel at the Fence, which was revealed over the weekend as a deception. The discovery and exposure of that deceit…

Read more

“The American Public has a Right to Know That They Do Not Have to Choose Between Torture and Terror”: Six questions for Matthew Alexander, author of How to Break a Terrorist

At 5:15 p.m. on June 7, 2006, two American F-16 fighters dropped 500-pound bombs on a farmhouse about five miles north of the Iraqi town of Baqubah. Within an hour,…

Read more

Close
“An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times
Subscribe now

Debug