American Culture

THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE: On the Dismantling of American Culture By David Mamet Sentinel, 241 pp., $27.95 Let’s cut to the chase: There is no secret knowledge. David Mamet, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter, makes this amply clear throughout “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture.’’ According to Mamet, secret knowledge is a spurious qualification claimed by the government to justify interfering in a societal or economic issue beyond its constitutionally limited purview.

The US State Department, which has long sent American artists abroad as part of its cultural diplomacy efforts, is for the first time launching a sizable program to bring foreign performers here - an initiative administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts. Comedians, puppeteers, musicians, and dancers from Pakistan, Haiti, and Indonesia will tour to small and midsize cities across America next year as part of the nearly $2 million Center Stage program. "Since the early '50s, we've basically sent groups overseas to do people-to-people exchange for mutual understanding," said Ann...

Even acceptable patterns of behavior among moviegoers were nudged toward change for “Psycho.’’ “Now there were life-size cardboard-cutout figures of [director Alfred] Hitchcock himself in theater lobbies,’’ David Thomson writes in “The Moment of Psycho,’’ “wagging a finger and insisting that no one, positively no one, would be let in once the film had started.’’ Where once audience members could show up in the middle of a picture and stick around through the next screening until they had caught themselves up, “Psycho’’ needed to be viewed from its starting point in order to maintain the...

THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE: On the Dismantling of American Culture By David Mamet Sentinel, 241 pp., $27.95 Let’s cut to the chase: There is no secret knowledge. David Mamet, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter, makes this amply clear throughout “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture.’’ According to Mamet, secret knowledge is a spurious qualification claimed by the government to justify interfering in a societal or economic issue beyond its constitutionally limited purview.

A Time for to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture , By Michael Kammen, University of North Carolina, 336 pp., illustrated, $39.95 Spring arrives Saturday. Its arrival, in equinoctial calculation, is not to be confused with the events that more directly signify the appearance of "spring" -- upcountry's "mud season" and the urban driver's "pothole season. " Still, as Michael Kammen puts it in "A Time to Every Purpose," a book as filled with wonder as the cycling of the seasons themselves, spring is "the most anxiously anticipated season . . . the only one about which...

'The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army' British Museum LONDON Sept. 13-April 6 The 1974 discovery of more than 8,000 terra-cotta soldiers buried by Qin Shihuangdi, China's first emperor, in the 3d century BC, was one of the great archeological finds of the century. The emperor hoped his stony fighting men would help him conquer the afterworld. This exhibition includes more examples of the soldiers than have ever been shown outside China, as well as other recent discoveries made at the original site.

“Outsourced’’ executive producer Robert Borden recently met with reporters in Los Angeles to talk up the new call-center comedy. On avoiding stereotypes: “[Parvesh Cheena’s] character is modeled after that guy that everyone works with that will not stop talking to you. If you talk to them in the break room, they’re going to follow you out and talk to you on the floor, so you can’t get rid of the person. That’s neither American nor Indian.’’ On dealing with cultural clashes in a comedic way: “Both sides of...

Like any nation, the United States has its dirty little secrets. One of the most enduring has to do with race. For centuries, American society oppressed African-Americans. Yet culturally, without those same African-Americans (Jews, too), America would basically be a wetter Australia or warmer Canada: a stiff, bland Anglo annex. So much of the energy, richness, and zest that the world has come to associate with American culture has come courtesy of the African-American experience. The funny thing is, and this is where the secret comes in, the African-American...

SURVIVING PARADISE: One Year on a Disappearing Island By Peter Rudiak-Gould Union Square, 256 pp., $21.95 Peter Rudiak-Gould was only 21 when he signed on to spend a year teaching English on Ujae, a tiny atoll in the Marshall Islands. So we can understand his naïve hope that it would be a Pacific paradise of “consummate peace and perpetual romance.” Instead he found himself virtually marooned on a speck of coral 2,000 miles from the nearest continent, an island that could be explored in its entirety in a matter of minutes.

TODOS SANTOS, Mexico -- In the doldrums of winter, or the meteorological disappointments of New England spring, when it comes to sun-seeking, I am not a picky sort. Sun is sun is sun. So when a jaunt to Baja California was possible in February because of business in Los Angeles, my first thought was to head to Cabo San Lucas. The all-purpose resort megalopolis seemed a natural spot to lie on the beach. But a bit of research revealed that beyond Cabo is a languidly romantic corner of Mexico, dotted with small towns whose charms are best explored from beyond a...

Images conjured by the 1980s have congealed into cliché: bright pop music, shoulder pads and leggings, and a wave of flag-waving conservatism. Some of these things are still with us, of course — it’s not only the fashion world that recycles trends — while others now seem inconceivable (until they come back into style). Two new books attempt to untangle the meaning of the decade and what it spawned in politics, culture, and society. David Sirota, author of “Back to Our Future,’’ argues that one key to understanding the 1980s is that the era itself was built on nostalgia.

“Outsourced’’ executive producer Robert Borden recently met with reporters in Los Angeles to talk up the new call-center comedy. On avoiding stereotypes: “[Parvesh Cheena’s] character is modeled after that guy that everyone works with that will not stop talking to you. If you talk to them in the break room, they’re going to follow you out and talk to you on the floor, so you can’t get rid of the person. That’s neither American nor Indian.’’ On dealing with cultural clashes in a comedic way: “Both sides of view...

Even acceptable patterns of behavior among moviegoers were nudged toward change for “Psycho.’’ “Now there were life-size cardboard-cutout figures of [director Alfred] Hitchcock himself in theater lobbies,’’ David Thomson writes in “The Moment of Psycho,’’ “wagging a finger and insisting that no one, positively no one, would be let in once the film had started.’’ Where once audience members could show up in the middle of a picture and stick around through the next screening until they had caught themselves up, “Psycho’’ needed to be viewed from its starting point in...

SURVIVING PARADISE: One Year on a Disappearing Island By Peter Rudiak-Gould Union Square, 256 pp., $21.95 Peter Rudiak-Gould was only 21 when he signed on to spend a year teaching English on Ujae, a tiny atoll in the Marshall Islands. So we can understand his naïve hope that it would be a Pacific paradise of “consummate peace and perpetual romance.” Instead he found himself virtually marooned on a speck of coral 2,000 miles from the nearest continent, an island that could be explored in its entirety in a matter of minutes.

Like any nation, the United States has its dirty little secrets. One of the most enduring has to do with race. For centuries, American society oppressed African-Americans. Yet culturally, without those same African-Americans (Jews, too), America would basically be a wetter Australia or warmer Canada: a stiff, bland Anglo annex. So much of the energy, richness, and zest that the world has come to associate with American culture has come courtesy of the African-American experience. The funny thing is, and this is where the secret comes in, the...

'The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army' British Museum LONDON Sept. 13-April 6 The 1974 discovery of more than 8,000 terra-cotta soldiers buried by Qin Shihuangdi, China's first emperor, in the 3d century BC, was one of the great archeological finds of the century. The emperor hoped his stony fighting men would help him conquer the afterworld. This exhibition includes more examples of the soldiers than have ever been shown outside China, as well as other recent discoveries made at the original site.

The US State Department, which has long sent American artists abroad as part of its cultural diplomacy efforts, is for the first time launching a sizable program to bring foreign performers here - an initiative administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts. Comedians, puppeteers, musicians, and dancers from Pakistan, Haiti, and Indonesia will tour to small and midsize cities across America next year as part of the nearly $2 million Center Stage program. "Since the early '50s, we've basically sent groups overseas to do people-to-people exchange for mutual understanding," said Ann...

Andrew Millner uses a stylus on an electronic graphics tablet to draw trees and gardens. Using hundreds of digital photos taken from different angles as a reference, he incorporates details that would be difficult to see from one perspective. Most of the pieces in his show at Miller Block Gallery feature white lines over lush color backgrounds, made into glossy light jet prints. Millner is wise to work only in outlines; texture or shadow would complicate things. The outlines of several layers of leaves become their own kind of texture, conveying the rustle...

TODOS SANTOS, Mexico -- In the doldrums of winter, or the meteorological disappointments of New England spring, when it comes to sun-seeking, I am not a picky sort. Sun is sun is sun. So when a jaunt to Baja California was possible in February because of business in Los Angeles, my first thought was to head to Cabo San Lucas. The all-purpose resort megalopolis seemed a natural spot to lie on the beach. But a bit of research revealed that beyond Cabo is a languidly romantic corner of Mexico, dotted with small towns whose charms are best explored from beyond a poolside cabana.

A Time for to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture , By Michael Kammen, University of North Carolina, 336 pp., illustrated, $39.95 Spring arrives Saturday. Its arrival, in equinoctial calculation, is not to be confused with the events that more directly signify the appearance of "spring" -- upcountry's "mud season" and the urban driver's "pothole season. " Still, as Michael Kammen puts it in "A Time to Every Purpose," a book as filled with wonder as the cycling of the seasons themselves, spring is "the most anxiously anticipated season . . ....