Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves by Albert Goodwin

A Coup de Greece?

Here’s the scoop on poor old Hellas, that sad little EU country given a temporary reprieve from being hauled to the municipal dump: Greece will default sometime in 2012. If there are any doubters around, this prediction comes from the great oracle of economics Taki, the very same Taki who smelled ...

James Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window

Manhattan Melodrama

NEW YORK—Summertime, and as the song tells us, “the livin’ is easy.” The temperature is in the nineties, girls’ dresses are at their flimsiest, love is in the air, and sex is everywhere—what else can one wish for? This is my last week in the Bagel, and as always I am reluctant to leave. ...

Times Square circa 1950

I Liked the Older New York

In that wonderful old Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, gambler Sky Masterson is romancing the Salvation Army’s Sister Sarah Brown after an all-nighter of boozing it up in Havana. Walking Sarah home to her mission in New York, he tells her that “Only in Times Square does the dawn get turned ...

Pre ‘67 Borders or Bust

Israel "€“ Palestine "€“ President Obama finally articulated last night what we"€™ve been waiting for since his election in 2008: Israel has to retreat to its 1967 borders. Not surprisingly, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu not only rejected the proposal, he demanded an apology from the ...

Gypsy

The Recently Retired and the Recently Expired

ORLANDO—A neutron bomb hit this place just as I got off the airplane, killing all humans but leaving the buildings intact. It was a horrid, unpardonable crime, and I blame the scientists. They should have done it the other way around: Kill the buildings and save the humans, however brain-dead ...

Gunter Sachs

Gunter Sachs’s Mysterious Exit

Why would a German playboy-billionaire industrialist with a large family and lots of old and good friends have dinner in Gstaad with one of his closest buddies, then go up to his chalet and put a bullet in his ...

P.J. O'Rourke

Liberal Indigestion

Some thirty years or so ago, my friend P. J. O"€™Rourke came to dinner at my New York house with what was then his new bride. She was beautiful, reserved, intelligent, and after dinner she called me a male-chauvinist anti-Semitic racist before leaving the house in a fury. P. J. apologized and ...

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A Tale of Two Dragon Ladies

Mme. Nhu, who died five days before THE wedding, was a hell of a woman. When she was captured by the commies in Hue in 1946, she stood up to them until the French rescued her four months later. She was anti-French and anti-commie, yet the Western press named her the Dragon Lady, a nickname she ...

Linda Christian

No Flowers for Charlie Sheen

Gone are the days when I used to wear a tux to go see a Broadway show. These days I feel overdressed wearing a sport coat and necktie. I used to go to Broadway a lot when I was young. My girlfriend at the time, Linda Christian, was an actress known for her romances more than her screen credits. ...

Marcus Aurelius

Monarchy: The Fairest of Them All

How fair a rule is monarchy? A Byzantine scholar wrote that it was the fairest, to the point that God sustained it, as long as the emperors were elected by the army or an aristocratic senate. With their coronation, legitimate successors and usurpers alike automatically became sacred. The ancient ...