British songwriter Billy Bragg is best known in the United States for setting Woody Guthrie lyrics to music on the Mermaid Avenue CDs. Like Guthrie, Bragg is a populist, and often political, songwriter. His music from the 1980s is featured in a new boxed set.

Box Set Features Political Stockpile of Billy Bragg

Hmf, I thought.

(I often think in snorts.)

What do they know from grammar? Him is the objective case of the second-person male pronoun and thus used as the object of the preposition to. Who waits modifies him and is not the tail end of a "noun clause."

Then in came a letter -- a real postal letter signed in antediluvian ink, mailed from San Antonio at the cost of an old-fashioned stamp — from Jacques Barzun, the revered emeritus professor from Columbia University who published his masterpiece, "From Dawn to Decadence," in 2000, when he was 92.

Standing Corrected

Welcome to ThoughtCast, a podcast and public radio interview program on authors, academics and intellectuals. I’m Jenny Attiyeh. ThoughtCast offers something that is glaringly absent from the media today: a bridge between the publications and pursuits of the intellectual world and a curious, informed, mainstream audience.

By providing detailed, unhurried and personal conversation with current writers and thinkers, ThoughtCast is that rare hybrid: a show that is both informative and entertaining – a synergy between mass media and the ivory tower. Think of it as “Terry Gross comes to Harvard.”

Examples of upcoming guests are: Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, literary critic James Wood, former poet laureate Robert Pinsky and Lisa Randall, an influential physicist at Harvard who has recently written “Warped Passages,” a book that argues for the existence of extra dimensions.

ThoughtCast

Just look at it.

WORDCOUNT / Tracking the Way We Use Language /

Only recently have American banks and wireless companies begun developing mobile payment products. Now, the next wave of technology could wash ashore within two years.

Ring Up My Bill, Please

Forty years ago, a young man named Charles Faurot traveled from New York City to southwestern Virginia looking for older traditional banjo players to record for a tiny country-music record label. He found them and eventually produced three LPs of raw, intense mountain music.

The records became the subjects of near cult-like devotion among a generation of younger players from around the world. One of them was NPR newscaster and reporter Paul Brown. The records are back out, on CD, with additional tracks.

Listening to them again, Brown found himself swept away by their brilliance.

Historic Recordings Tell Clawhammer Banjo History

"H ow many times have a few people overcome plenty of people? . . . America has failed in three years to defeat a few hundred mujahidin, and its disgrace is very big. The most powerful army in the world . . . equipped with very sophisticated weapons . . . has failed to control very limited numbers of [mujahidin]. Oh my God, how is that?

Statements by Insurgents

We live in a world that is objectively more dangerous than the one we knew at the outset of the millennium; whatever our disagreements, since 9/11 both our foreign policy and our domestic politics have pivoted around this ineluctable fact. And because the terrorists who struck us represent a global phenomenon, we assume that the world is objectively more dangerous for everyone. But is it?

Wonderful World?

It may sound like a paradox, but you can focus too much time on your job at the expense of your career.

CareerJournal | Get Ahead This Year With These Simple Steps

Commentator Andrei Codrescu muses on the appeal by friends to 'plug' their new books. He says there was a time when such a plea would have seemed uncivil. Now, the world has changed and publicity wins over decorum.

When it Comes to Publicity, Authors Have No Shame