Scribblings

Columns and essays

• One Hundred Years of Freud in America – Wall Street Journal
• We always muff a crisis – Los Angeles Times
• Fannie, Freddie and our dotty old uncle- New York Times
• Those crazy indemnity forms – New York Times
• Bewitched and bothered by an oil cartel – New York Times
• The almighty dollar – The Boston Globe
• Kiss that uncomfortable greeting goodbye – Boston Globe
• Automation anxiety – The Wilson Quarterly
• Who’s in charge here? – The Wilson Quarterly
• A manifesto at 50 (and its little known twin) – Wilson Quarterly
• The cursed blessing of cheap eats – The Wilson Quarterly
• Strive we must – Wilson Quarterly
• My ‘Culture of Money’ columns in the New York Times
• My ‘On the Contrary’ columns in the New York Times
• What’s inequality? Ask a former doorman – New York Times
• Our friends the chain stores – New York Times
• Land of loners – The Wilson Quarterly
• Going solo – Wall Street Journal
• Money really does buy happiness. Uh-oh. – The Boston Globe
• Unpaid internships? File under ‘hypocrisy’ – LA Times
• Lying for a living: the politician as novelist – Wall Street Journal
• Killing the earth in order to save it – The Wall Street Journal
• Some useful sacrilege on sinful CEO wages – LA Times
• Driving out the downtrodden with rent control – LA Times
• On setting a novel in Philadelphia – Philadelphia Inquirer
• Rostock or bust (my visit to Germany) – LA Weekly
• Working at home (in olden days) – Christian Science Monitor
• The sound of no hands tapping – MIT Technology Review

Longer magazine pieces

• Forget profits. Never mind revenue – The Internet Industry Standard
• What the 1980s meant (a lot) – LA Times
• Numbers that are money – LA Times
• House of girth: on making McMansions – Philadelphia Magazine
• The forgotten plague – American Heritage
• Finding fault for the fat – Boston Globe Magazine

Book Reviews

• Of beards and men – Washington Post
• The Nobel sperm bank, reassessed – Boston Globe
• The Unsinkable City – Reason
• God in Gotham – Reason
• Elitists for Revolution – WSJ
• Writers who didn’t go gentle into that good night – Wall Street Journal
• My age of anxiety – Wall Street Journal
• Blood suckers for the ages – Wall Street Journal
• Elitists for revolution – Wall Street Journal
• The hazards of sincerity – Wall Street Journal
• ‘Turn of the Century’ reviewed- Wall Street Journal
• Pink packets, family perils – Wall Street Journal
• Before helicopter parents: a history of American childhood – Wall Street Journal
• The unnatural history of teenage rooms – Wall Street Journal
• When the credit goes to DNA–Wall Street Journal
• Life and work, codified at last – Wall Street Journal
• Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ – Wall Street Journal
• Low wit in its highest form – Wall Street Journal
• Three books on business failure – Wall Street Journal
• Alan Blinder’s ‘After the Music Stopped’ – Bloomberg
• Greenspan’s ‘Map’ is clueless trip – Bloomberg
• David Stockman’s ‘Great Deformation’ – Bloomberg
• Guilt and philanthropy: the good rich – Bloomberg
• Mel Brooks bio – Newsday
• A narrow history of “white trash” – Newsday
• Jonathan Franzen’s ‘Purity’ – Newsday
• The Jewish novel lives: ‘Here I Am’ – Newsday
• ‘To Rise Again at a Decent Hour’ – Newsday
• John Lanchester’s ‘Capital’ – Newsday
• ‘The Shakespeare Requirement,’ as you’ll like it – Newsday
• Smarter Faster Better – Newsday
• Meet America’s ‘Gun Guys’ – Newsday
• Lessons of the long-ago past from Jared Diamond – Newsday
• In David Gilbert’s novel, the great writer’s a bad dad – Newsday
• ‘Dreamland’: the science of sleep – Newsday
• Of moose and men – Washington Monthly
• How the personal computer got licked – S.F. Chronicle
• All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison – San Jose Mercury
• ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ & ‘Thumbsucker’ reviewed – San Jose Mercury
• Peddling metal: on the beauty of corrugated iron – Wilson Quarterly

• The collision of immigration and affirmative action – Wilson Quarterly

Humor

• Our fits explained – The New Yorker
• On being invited to dinner with Dad – The Spectator USA
• The only martini recipe you’ll ever need – Wall Street Journal
• Dear co-op board, please reconsider – New York Daily News
• The literature of scandal – Wall Street Journal
• Papyrus to paper: get over it! – Los Angeles Times
• Portman opens door, G.O.P. follows – The New Yorker
• Hey, kids, don’t forget your guns – Los Angeles Times
• A novel subsidy – Wall Street Journal
• Ripping the lid off cultural appropriation – Wall Street Journal

Fashion and Architecture

• Where have all the jockstraps gone? – Slate
• Down with denim – Wall Street Journal
• The shirt from hell – Slate
• One man’s vernacular – Metropolis
• Platinum at a price (doing badly while doing good) – Metropolis
• Cubicle living, Italian style – Metropolis
• Making good design good business – Metropolis
• A city of the imagination – Metropolis
• Why great residential architecture doesn’t pay – Metropolis
• Bad taste and bankruptcy – New York Times
• The very model of a modern modular – Wall Street Journal
• Modernist, modular but not yet mass produced – Wall Street Journal
• Confessions of an architecture victim – This Old House

Travel

• Destination: Amsterdam. Anne Frank’s hiding place 50 years later – LA Times
• Pittsburgh: the National Aviary and more – Newsday
• America file: Salt Lake City – Travel Holiday
• The view from paradise – Fortune

Wall Street Journal science columns

• To get more done at work, just stand up
• Pulling potable water from thin air
• Do White House visits raise a firm’s value? Yes.
• Stronger-looking men rated higher on leadership ability
• How to turn anything into a touchpad
• Robots that make like vines
• How paper’s unique attributes can foil counterfeiters
• A computational technique for fact-checking statements
• A cold way to get rid of e-waste
• Say again? A new tool for editing voice recordings
• Shedding light on habit formation
• Giving scary new meaning to ‘lip syncing’
• Adding and subtracting words in video so no one can tell

Writings on technology

• A selection

Financial work

• Selling a one-cent stamp for millions – The New Yorker
• Raising philanthropic kids – Bloomberg Wealth Manager
• Pouring a stable foundation – Bloomberg Wealth Manager
• Inside or out? Telling your assets where to go – Bloomberg Wealth Manager
• My small biz columns in the Wall Street Journal
• My personal finance columns in Inc.