Even the simplest things had a glorious pointlessness to them. When buttons came in, about 1650, people couldn’t get enough of them and arrayed them in decorative profusion on the backs and collars and sleeves...

If I had a dime for every time I heard someone say that they’re tired of a genre (zombies) because it’s only a fad, I’d be rich. #DeadRising

Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.

Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?

I loved buildings that had grown silently with the centuries, catching the best of each generation while time curbed the artist’s pride and the philistine’s vulgarity and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman.

allergies,” I believe, to the foods they had seen their own mothers fearing and loathing as diet fads passed through their homes. I could’ve strangled their mothers for saddling these girls with the idea that...

The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver...

In 2008, Barack Obama was the electoral equivalent of the Hula Hoop; a political Pet Rock; a craze, a fad, an irrational gadget. The latest have-to-have, must-vote-for candidate.