Jazz fans, here you go. A list of the most essential jazz albums compiled by David Remnick (editor of The New Yorker) and Richard Brody.

And, for the fun of it, I’m throwing in a video of David Brubeck playing the classic ‘Take Five’ circa 1961. (Also find it on our YouTube playlist.)

There’s nothing like a good debate to reveal the issues that matter most to a society. And that’s what The Doha Debates have to offer - a good, nuanced look at the hottest issues in the Arab and Islamic worlds. The debates, which have been held in Qatar over the past three years, follow the format used in the famous Oxford Union debates. And they’ve been aired over the BBC and have picked up a sizable international following. (You can download the debates in video or via podcast from this page.) The speakers generally include ‘academics, politicians, religious figures, government officials, policy experts and journalists’ and some of the recent topics debated include the following (thanks Kirsten for the heads up on this):

• Is the Sunni-Shia conflict damaging Islam’s reputation as a religion of peace?
• Do the Palestinians risk becoming their own worst enemy?
• Is the face veil a barrier to integration in the West?
• Should the Palestinians give up their full right of return?

Faust’s Leben, Thaten und Höllenfahrt. English by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger

Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian, 1752-1831

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25468/25468.txt

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25468/25468.zip

Klinger was born of humble parentage in Frankfurt, on February 17, 1752. His father died when he was a child, and his early years were a hard struggle. He was enabled, however, in 1774 to enter the university of Gießen, where he studied law; and Goethe, with whom he had been acquainted since childhood, helped him in many ways. In 1775 Klinger gained with his tragedy Die Zwillinge a prize offered by the Hamburg theatre, under the auspices of the actress Sophie Charlotte Ackermann (1714-1792) and her son the famous actor and playwright, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder (1744-1816). In 1776 Klinger was appointed Theaterdichter to the “Seylersche Schauspiel-Gesellschaft” and held this post for two years. In 1778 he entered the Austrian military service and took part in the Bavarian war of succession. In 1780 he went to Saint Petersburg, became an officer in the Russian army, was ennobled and attached to the Grand Duke Paul, whom he accompanied on a journey to Italy and France. In 1785 he was appointed director of the corps of cadets, and having married a natural daughter of the empress Catharine, was made praeses of the Academy of Knights in 1799. In 1803 Klinger was nominated by the emperor Alexander curator of the university of Dorpat, an office he held until 1817; in 1811 he became lieutenant-general. He then gradually gave up his official posts, and after living for many years in honourable retirement, died at Dorpat on February 25, 1831.

Klinger was a man of vigorous moral character and full of fine feeling, though the bitter experiences and deprivations of his youth are largely reflected in his dramas. It was one of his earliest works, Sturm und Drang (1776), which gave its name to this artistic epoch. In addition to this tragedy and Die Zwillinge (1776), the chief plays of his early period of passionate fervour and restless “storm and stress” are Die neue Arria (1776), Simsone Grisaldo (1776) and Stilpo und seine Kinder (1780). To a later period belongs the fine double tragedy of Medea in Korinth and Medea auf dem Kaukasos (1791). In Russia he devoted himself mainly to the writing of philosophical romances, of which the best known are Fausts Leben, Taten und Höllenfahrt (1791), Geschichte Giafars des Barmeciden (1792) and Geschichte Raphaeis de Aquillas (1793). This series was closed in 1803 with Betrachtungen und Gedanken über verschiedene Gegenstände der Welt und der Literatur. In these works Klinger gives calm and dignified expression to the leading ideas which the period of Sturm und Drang had bequeathed to German classical literature.

Klingers works were published in twelve volumes (1809-1815), also 1832-1833 and 1842. The most recent edition is in eight volumes (1878-1880); but none of these is complete. A selection will be found in A. Sauer, Stürmer und Dränger, vol. 1. (1883). See E. Schmidt, Lenz und Klinger (1878); M. Rieger, Klinger in der Sturm- und Drangperiode (1880); and Klinger in seiner Reife (1896).

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address by Franklin Delano Roosevelt

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext94/fdr11.txt

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext94/fdr11.zip

Frontier Boys on the Coast by Wyn Roosevelt

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25473/25473.txt

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25473/25473.zip

Mud and Khaki by Vernon Bartlett

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25470/25470.txt

Pretty Tales for the Nursery by Isabel Thompson

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25469/25469.txt

Sister Carrie: a Novel by Theodore Dreiser

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext95/scarr10.txt

The Job by Sinclair Lewis

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25474/25474.txt

The Number “e” by Jerry Bonnell and Robert Nemiroff

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext94/ee710.txt

The Square Root of 2 by Jerry Bonnell and Robert Nemiroff

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/129/129.txt

Xian Qing Ou Ji

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25471/25471-0.txt

Arran del Cingle by Joseph Morató

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25443/25443-8.txt

Aunt Friendly’s Picture Book.
Containing Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25442/25442-h/25442-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25442/25442.txt

(May 13, 2008) - I was online earlier today and read that artist Robert Rauschenberg died yesterday of heart failure. He was 82. The New York Times called him a “Titan of American Art.”

First off, isn’t it funny how the legendary-sized compliments flow after you die? We need to get into the habit of complimenting people while they’re ALIVE. Praising me while I’m dead does me no good, but a nice comment while I’m alive might actually get me through another day.

Anyway, I feel the need to just sit here for a moment and talk about someone I did not know. I’m not an expert on Mr. Rauschenberg or his work, but I DO remember the times when I saw his work for myself in places like the Fisher Landau Center which has a great Rauschenberg collection or the Museum of Modern Art or even the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

(May 13, 2008) - I was online earlier today and read that artist Robert Rauschenberg died yesterday of heart failure. He was 82. The New York Times called him a “Titan of American Art.”

First off, isn’t it funny how the legendary-sized compliments flow after you die? We need to get into the habit of complimenting people while they’re ALIVE. Praising me while I’m dead does me no good, but a nice comment while I’m alive might actually get me through another day.

Anyway, I feel the need to just sit here for a moment and talk about someone I did not know. I’m not an expert on Mr. Rauschenberg or his work, but I DO remember the times when I saw his work for myself in places like the Fisher Landau Center which has a great Rauschenberg collection or the Museum of Modern Art or even the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

I’m smiling right now because when I think of Mr. Rauschenberg, I think about his GIANT, framed, pop, mixed-media pieces that always give me a sense of historical references, urban hipness and this feeling of rustic modernity. I have NOT read what anyone else has said about him. I’m just taking a moment to be
in the moment of my own memory of the man’s work which I’ve seen with my own eyes.

My somewhat cloudy memory is giving me images of soldiers, black birds, city streets and spliced-together, sepia-toned photographs of things … exactly what I cannot recall … however I’m continuing to smile because I’m feeling myself standing in the presence of his work inside these museums and the word that comes to mind is … communion. I feel that as an uneducated observer of art, I actually GOT what he was doing. For me, his splicing and dicing was about slicing life … making connections of wayward things and times, perhaps with the hope of making sense of it all … or maybe not.

Even though I never met Mr. Rauschenberg and will never own any of his work, I feel connected to him through my observations of what he leaves behind and the fact that he was a famous artist who was actually alive during my own lifetime. I wish that I could say something profound about him that would set the world ablaze, but all I can say is that I’m still smiling as I’m typing these words. He’s gone, but his spirit is in my smile. I can just feel it. Communion. A moment of silence.

From now on, whenever I happen upon a Rauschenberg during my art museum visits, I’ll say, “Hey Robert!” Then, I’ll stand there and bask in the presence of a titan … and as always, smile.

MICHAEL CORBIN IS AN AVID ART COLLECTOR AND AUTHOR OF THE NEW BOOK, “THE ART OF EVERYDAY JOE: A COLLECTOR’S JOURNAL.” CHECK IT OUT AT
WWW.ARTMAESTROGALLERY.COM