Women’s soccer rules!

THE U.S. WOMEN’S SOCCER WORLD CUP FINAL LOSS BROUGHT A DIVIDED AMERICAN PEOPLE TOGETHER—AND REMINDED US HOW ESSENTIAL TITLE IX IS.

My father never watched a soccer game in his life, but all during Sunday’s women’s World Cup final I kept thinking of him. When I was a kid, he thrilled me with his accounts of what it was like to sit in front of a radio and listen to Joe Louis’ knockout of Max Schmeling in 1938.

Literature

Nobel at last

By Allen Barra

Prizes, from the Oscars to the Heisman Trophy to the Nobel, matter not at all to me, which is perhaps why I was surprised to find that so many of my friends were surprised last October when Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Film

Being Bogie

TAKING A LOOK AT THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF AMERICA'S COOLEST STAR

By Allen Barra

I knew Humphrey Bogart was cool practically before I knew who Humphrey Bogart was.

Literature

Flipside

INSIDE THE TWO PENS OF FLANN O'BRIEN

By Allen Barra

“Was it the drink was his ruin,” asked Hugh Kenner of Flann O’Brien in A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers, “or was it the column? For ruin is the word. So much promise has seldom accomplished so little.” By the end of his life, “a great future lay behind him.”

Sports & Leisure

Three Outcomes of the NFL Contract Talks

WHY A WIN FOR THE PLAYERS IS A WIN FOR EVERYONE

By Allen Barra

Why a win for the players is a win for everyone So what just happened? For months, the sports media has been telling us that the National Football League Players Association was about to be crushed in their contract negotiations with the league owners.

Film

True Grit: A second look

EXPLORING THE ORIGINS OF AN OSCAR CONTENDER

By Allen Barra

True Grit is the Coen Brothers’ best, in large part because it isn’t the best Coen Brothers film. Or to say it another way, it’s their least characteristic film.

Sports & Leisure

Remembering Superbowls past

THE BEST AND WORST OF THE BIG GAME

By Allen Barra

THE TOP FIVE WORST SUPER BOWLS IN REVERSE ORDER OF SUCKINESS

Sports & Leisure

Questioning the king

WHY LEBRON SHOULD STOP APOLOGIZING AND WIN ONE ALREADY

By Allen Barra

“What should I do? What should I do?” asks a pensive LeBron James, the world’s greatest basketball player, in his new Nike ad. Don Draper would have called it “confessional advertising”—an ad designed to offset a client’s tarnished image.

Film

Bringing back baseball

KEN BURNS UPDATES HIS DOCUMENTARY ON THE NATIONAL PASTIME WITH THE TENTH INNING

By Allen Barra

Personally, I thought one of the best things about all nine parts of Baseball was that the Red Sox didn’t win anything after 1918. “Come on,” says Burns. “The history of the Red Sox has much to offer any baseball fan. They say the greatest teacher in baseball is loss.

Literature

Tripping over greatness

JANE LEAVY'S THE LAST BOY EXPLORES THE TWO SIDES OF MICKEY MANTLE

By Allen Barra

Mickey Mantle’s image looms over American sports like a golden god from a time only dimly remembered but still strongly felt. The consummate blend of power and speed ever to play baseball (he was clocked going from home to first base at 3.0 seconds, the best time of his era), his prodigious 500-foot blasts created the term “tape measure home run.