David Guaspari

ESSAYS

Note: If you want a copy of something that’s behind a paywall, or has disappeared into the ether, please go to the “contact” page and send me a message.

Stoppard’s Arcadia

A ramble through Stoppard’s best play. Antioch Review, Spring 1996, Vol. 54, Issue 2 (Read)

It’s … a Bird

Extreme birdwatching. Seattle Review, Winter 2001, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 (Read)
Reprinted in From the Finger Lakes: A Prose Anthology. Reviewed in the Ithaca Times: “David Guaspari makes birdwatching cool and funny in the old, unironic way only those actually devoted to something can”

Picture Perfect

A ramble through Randal Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution. The Weekly Standard, Dec. 5, 2005 (Read)

Enderby Upstairs

A ramble through Anthony Burgess’s four Enderby novels. New English Review, January 2008. (Read)

Homage to Patagonia

Some too-cushy-to-be-macho hiking at the end of the world. The Weekly Standard, Jan. 5, 2010 (Read)

Republicans in Ithaca: The few, the proud …

Tilting at windmills. The Weekly Standard, Sept. 20, 2010 (Read)

Sponge Bob 101

The philosophy of “and Philosophy.” The Weekly Standard, Jan. 25, 2012 (Read)

To Everest and Back

A trek to Everest Base Camp. The Weekly Standard, May 11, 2015 (Read)

Remembering Bob and Ray

A tribute to the great comedy duo. National Review Online, March 12, 2016 (Read)

Resolved to play

Reminiscence of an attempt, in early middle age, to improve my piano playing. The Weekly Standard, Oct. 10 2016 (Read)

Room at the Top

A trip to Greenland and Iceland. The Weekly Standard, Feb. 6 2017. (Read)

Dowdy Night

Making fun of Dorothy Sayers. National Review Online, June 3 2017. (Read)
Her fans can be a little touchy. From one reader’s response: “… stunningly jejune …Never read a more risible and pathetic attempt at literary review in my life.”

Outsmarting the Average Bear

An ode to bear canisters. The Weekly Standard, Nov. 10, 2017. (Read)

A Cycle of Madness

An appreciation of The Third Policeman. The New Criterion, Dec. 2017. (Read)

Emmy Noether’s Beautiful Theorem

The most beautiful result in mathematical physics. The Weekly Standard, Oct. 1, 2018. (Read)

Ideologists amok

An expository account of Kenneth Minogue’s Alien Powers. The New Criterion, June 2021. (Read)

Rowing Over

A life lesson or two from amateur rowing at Cambridge. Unpublished, but read at the Ithaca Literary Festival, May 5, 2021. Watch me, with a funky, self-administered pandemic haircut, starting at 29:15

To the Finse Station

A semi-hapless trip across Norway on cross-country skis. Lowestoft Chronicle, Number 46, June 2021. (Read)

The Middle-aged Man and the Sea

Hopping ferrys along the Marine Highway. Appears in From the Fingerlakes: A memoir anthology, Cayuga Lake Books, Fall 2021 (Read)

REVIEWS

Book reviews in the Commentary archive:

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, by Bill James, July/Aug 2002 (Read)

A Tour of the Calculus, by David Berlinski, April 1997 (Read)

Newton’s Optical Writings, by Dennis L. Sepper, July 1995 (Read)

Overcoming Math Anxiety, by Sheila Tobias, Oct. 1994 (Read)

Book reviews in the New Criterion archive:

Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Godel, by Stephen Budianski, March 2022 (Read)

Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask by Jon Pessah, Sept. 2020 (Read)

Infinite Baseball: Notes From a Philospher at the Ballpark by Alva Noe, Nov. 2019 (Read)

Knowing the Score: What Sports Can Teach Us About Philosophy (And What Philosophy Can Teach Us About Sports) by David Papineau, Nov. 2017 (Read)

Time Travel: A History, by James Gleick, Jan. 2017 (Read)

Nabokov in America, by Robert Roper, Oct. 2015 (Read)

The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany, ed. Levi Stahl, May 2015 (Read)

Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, by Amir Alexander, March 2015 (Read)

An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics, by James Franklin, Sept. 2014 (Read)

Book reviews from the Weekly Standard, now archived at the Washington Examiner

A Most Elegant Equation, by David Stipp, 4/27/2018 (Read)

Genius at Play, by Siobhan Roberts, 11/30/2015 (Read)

Bird Sense, by Tim Birkhead, 10/21/2013 (Read)

King of Infinite Space, by David Berlinski, 2/18/2013 (Read)

Damn Yankees, ed. Rob Fleder and Pinstripe Empire, by Marty Appel, 7/23/2012 (Read)

Inside Jokes, by Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennet, and Reginald B. Adams, Jr., 4/9/2012 (Read)

Galileo, by John Heilbron and Galileo: Watcher of the Skies, by David Wootton, 1/31/2011 (Read)

It’s What’s Between the Lines that Counts, by Fay Vincent, 7/26/2010 (Read)

Is God a Mathematician?, by Mario Livio, 9/14/2009 (Read)

The Unfinished Game, by Keith Devlin, 6/22/2009 (Read)

Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, 1/19/2009 (Read)

The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny, by Ivar Ekeland, 10/6/2009 (Read)

Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature, by Marcus du Sautoy, 5/12/2008 (Read)

The Pythagorean Theorem: A 4,000-Year History, by Eli Maor, 2/25/2008 (Read)

The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer’s Journey into the World of Bridge, by Edward McPherson, 12/24/2007 (Read)

Symmetry and the Monster: The Story of One of the Greatest Quests of Mathematics, by Mark Ronan, 3/19/2007 (Read)

Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, by Rebecca Goldstein, 6/19/2006 (Read)

Gentle Regrets: Thoughts From a Life, by Roger Scruton, 4/3/2006 (Read)

Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, by David Edmonds and John Eidinow, 4/15/2002 (Read)

Book reviews in The New Atlantis archive:

Insights and Manipulations: What Classical Geometry Looked Like At Its Peak, And How It Was Transformed, by Harvey Flaumenhaft, Spring 2021 (Read)

The Weil Conjectures, by Karen Olsson, Winter 2020 (Read)

What is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Mechanics, by Adam Becker, Winter 2018 (Read)

Book reviews in the National Review archive:

Tom Stoppard: A Life, by Hermione Lee, 4/19/2021 (Read)