Lionel Essrog, the twitching, barking, gabbling narrator of Jonathan Lethem's new novel, 'Motherless Brooklyn,' is no movie-of-the-week novelty grafted onto a noir mystery. Maybe his Tourette's is a gimmick, but it's a gimmick with depth, with soul.

The Illinois Constitution was written before they realized they'd have a city the size of Chicago in the state. The constitution had severe limits on the ability of any city to raise monies through taxes and bonds. When Chicago grew explosively, they had to come up with ways of getting more money to do more things.

Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections.

Something often neglected in popular accounts of the Wild West is the extent to which its dramas were colored by the politics and personal resentments left by the Civil War.

None of us get to divorce ourselves from the world. We walk into the theater and bring all of our grief and our pain and our joy with us.

Once a disease has entered the body, all parts which are healthy must fight it: not one alone, but all. Because a disease might mean their common death. Nature knows this; and Nature attacks the disease with whatever help she can muster.

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

Why, in our 'free' country, do Americans meekly stand aside and let the state limit our choices, even when we are dying?