The Boomer Experience : Back in the Day

  A thin, dog-eared paperback graced our kitchen’s bookshelf from the time I was just about old enough to see above the counter. To my child’s eyes, its title, “Diet for a Small Planet,” seemed welcoming: I was a small person, so what could be bad about a small planet? Indeed, author Frances Moore Lappé is the first to say that her book, and the 50 years of work focused on the intersection of food and democracy that has followed, is about hope. “I’m not an optimist — I’m a possible-ist,” she says. “Everything is possible, we just have to make it happen.” To keep reading this article, click here

  How you react to the four-part documentary "Muhammad Ali," by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, premiering Sunday September 19 on PBS (8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT) might hinge on your age. If you're under 50, you might see it as akin to  Ken Burns' past epics  such as "The Civil War," "Baseball" and "Jazz" — a superbly crafted history lesson, but a bit distant. If, however, you are (like me) a boomer, it will be like your favorite classic rock albums. As the tumultuous life of the most famous athlete of the 20th century unspools, each bout in and out of the ring may well remind you of where you were when the event was taking place. All the greatest hits, the jabs and the jabbering ("I am the greatest!"), will be like Proust's Madeleine. To keep reading this article, click here.

  Dr. No  not only introduced the world to  James Bond  and founded the most successful movie franchise in history, it also helped change the cinematic world when it was released on Oct. 5, 1962. Before  Dr. No , the super-spy wasn't a common screen trope. It was rare for an actor to be seen so many times in bed that he had to look good with no shirt on; leading ladies in those movies didn't habitually show up in bikinis (in fact, the bikini was still a little-known item of clothing at the time). And few people had heard of  Sean Connery . To keep reading this article, click here.

  It is true that extraordinary effort was put into improving conditions inside America’s prisons and jails back in the 1960s and ’70s.  Exactly 50 years ago, from Sept. 9 to Sept. 13, 1971, the nation watched riveted as nearly 1,300 men stood together in America’s most dramatic prison uprising, for better conditions at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The men were fed on 63¢ a day; were given only one roll of toilet paper a month; endured beatings, racial epithets, and barbaric medical treatment; and suffered the trauma of being thrown into a cell and kept there for days, naked, as punishment.  The Attica prison uprising was historic because these men spoke directly to the public, and by doing so, they powerfully underscored to the nation that serving time did not make someone less of a human being. Now, despite the protections won by their rebellion, and the broader movement for justice of which it was a part, the incarcerated are once again desperately trying to

  “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” is one of the most fascinating and unlikely success stories in show business history.  The album became the first stand-up comedy recording to reach #1 on the Billboard 200 chart.  It sold over a million copies.  And, most incredibly, the album is a recording of Bob Newhart’s very first nightclub gig. In 1959, Bob Newhart was an obscure wannabe comedian from Chicago.  The ex-accountant had a few routines that he would recite on local radio.  Chicago disc jockey Dan Sorkin heard that Warner Bros., a fledgling record label, was looking to get into the stand-up comedy album game. So Sorkin had Newhart make a tape recording of his three best bits (“Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue,” “The Driving Instructor,” and “The Submarine Commander”) and then passed it on to Warners.  Amazingly the company said they would take a chance on this unknown local comic. Warners prepared to send a crew to record Newhart at his next stand-up gig. The only problem was that

  A woman grappling with mental health issues, a move to an isolated town upstate, the sneering looks of unfriendly locals. Any of the unsettling parts of   Let’s Scare Jessica to Death ’s premise should seem as familiar to anybody in 2021 as they must have in 1971, when the psychological vampire tale first debuted. The film was hard to find for years, but a Blu-ray release by Scream Factory last year has remedied that, which, considering its story hasn’t aged a bit, is fortunate for horror fans who might be interested in discovering it for the first time. To keep reading this article, click here.

  NEW YORK -- Before the 1960s even began, the time's subversive mindset had been imagined in such works as Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road," the early poems of Allen Ginsberg and the manuscript of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22." Heller started his novel in the 1950s, when he was working in advertising and protest was mostly an underground movement. The book was published in 1961, with no tour to support it and few reviews to alert anyone that a new kind of war story had been told."When 'Catch-22' came out, people were saying, 'Well, World War II wasn't like this,"' E.L. Doctorow, Heller's friend and fellow author, said Monday. "But when we got tangled up in Vietnam, it became a sort of text for the consciousness of that time. "They say fiction can't change anything, but they can certainly organize a generation's consciousness." To keep reading this article click here

  Call it fate or an unfortunate coincidence that Dr. Seuss'  The Lorax  celebrates its 50th anniversary the same week the United Nations releases an urgent report on the  dire consequences of human-induced climate change.  The conflict between the industrious, polluting Once-ler and the feisty Lorax, who "speaks for the trees," feels more prescient than ever. "Once-ler!" he cried with a cruffulous croak.  "Once-ler! You're making such smogulous smoke!  My poor Swomee-Swans...why, they can't sing a note!  No one can sing who has smog in his throat. "He wanted a book that captured the effects of pollution on ecosystems and I would say it was really ahead of its time," says anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Nathaniel Dominy, who teaches at Dartmouth. To keep reading this article, click here.

  The Guns of Navarone  is the epic adventure of six Allied saboteurs dispatched to knock out two large caliber German guns positioned within a natural rock fortress on the fictional Greek island of Navarone. The mission is undertaken so that British warships can safely pass the island to rescue British troops stranded on a neighboring island, Kheros (also fictional).  The movie, based on the Alistair MacLean’s 1957 novel of the same name, premiered 60 years ago April 27. Starring Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker, Irene Papas, James Darren and David Niven,  Guns  was among the most successful of a popular genre of films set in the Second World War that included  Bridge Over the River Kwai .  While almost everybody thinks of  Guns  as a war movie, closer inspection reveals that the movie proposes a relatively sophisticated but usually overlooked argument supporting a culture of life.  To keep reading this article, click here.