Leigh Kamping-Carder
LEIGH KAMPING-CARDER is a journalist living in Brooklyn.
Holding Court
By Leigh Kamping-CarderLast month, the U.S. Supreme Court began its 2012 term. This month, Americans will decide whether President Barack Obama gets a second term in office. So Jeffrey Toobin’s latest effort, The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, could not be more timely.
Inside India
By Leigh Kamping-CarderThe cover features a crinkly-skinned man in a saffron turban, a slim cell phone clasped to his ear: the perfect image of the two Indias, ancient and modern, colliding. Right, I thought when I saw it, another one of those books.
A Blueprint, or a Green One?
By Leigh Kamping-CarderThomas L. Friedman is the anti-Cassandra. Unlike the figure from Greek mythology, his warnings are never prescient, but they are always heeded—if one judges by bestseller lists and dinner party chatter. Friedman’s last prophecy arrived in 2005, when he introduced globalization to the masses.
A Case for Eco-Optimism
By Leigh Kamping-CarderIn prose that is part speechwriter platitude and part skateboarder slang, Turner catalogues the technologies that could make sustainability a reality.
Behind the Veil
By Leigh Kamping-CarderWhen James Westcott, then a graduate student at New York University, learned that the artist Marina Abramovic was staging “The House With the Ocean View”, a performance in which she lived in the Sean Kelly Gallery for twelve days, he rushed to catch the remaining days of the installation.
Hobsbawm’s Empire
By Leigh Kamping-CarderI first read the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm’s work in an undergraduate seminar.
A Geek and Her Pilgrims
By Leigh Kamping-CarderHow does Sarah Vowell do it? Despite her deep-seated geek tendencies, the writer and radio contributor has parlayed her persona into a best-selling brand.
Portrait of the Artists
By Leigh Kamping-CarderA couple of years ago, Janet Malcolm accompanied Thomas Struth, the German photographer, to a shoot at a solar panel factory near Dresden. Malcolm was eager to watch Struth at work; she was profiling him for the New Yorker, where she has written since 1963. But as the day stretched on, Struth became so absorbed in the project that he neglected Malcolm, stranding her at the facility long after they were set to leave—a rare slight from a normally considerate man. Eventually, she “rather crossly” took a taxi back to the city.
You had me at ‘‘Goodbye’’
By Leigh Kamping-CarderThat feeling—of somehow souring on the Big Apple—arises again and again in Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York. The 28-essay collection is the brainchild of Hudson Valley resident and writer Sari Botton, who took her inspiration from Joan Didion's classic essay of the same name.
“News” Under the Sun
By Leigh Kamping-CarderSometimes it seems that the only media consumers left are fellow journalists. How else to explain the miles of newsprint devoted to the next longform feature magazine, or the proliferating “media” staff reporter positions at respected publications, or the podcasts and blogs whose sole subject is The Media and its major players?
Single Alright Female
By Leigh Kamping-CarderFor me, it was the broken granny cart. I had decided to redecorate my apartment—the very word “redecorate” signaling a burgeoning adulthood, a sense that I would put down roots in the form of new paint and sturdy bookcases. Which led to my predicament.
Twenty(-something) Questions
By Leigh Kamping-CarderBoxes of chocolates and red paper hearts are unavoidable fixtures of Valentine’s Day. But this year, the Hallmark holiday also inspired a different kind of display: a collective handwringing over the sex and dating lives of 20-something women.
In Conversation
GIRL ON FIRE (AND ICE)
BLAIR BRAVERMAN with Leigh Kamping‑Carder
A few minutes into my phone call with Blair Braverman, the line goes silent. A wolf is prowling outside her window. “It’s very cute,” she says, distracted. All in a day’s work for Braverman, the twenty-eight-year-old author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North, a memoir of her experiences living in Norway and Alaska that came out in early July.
Having a Crystal Ball
By Leigh Kamping-CarderCould anyone have predicted in June that Donald Trump would lead the race for Republican presidential nominee—in October?
