Radical

It's done now. He's been sacked, cashiered. Joseph Epstein had written 91 essays in consecutive issues of the American Scholar since, at age 37, becoming its editor with the Spring 1975 issue. That quarterly journal is the wholly-owned organ of Phi Beta Kappa, the college honors society. Those pieces have been published in five collections. They stand among the best essays written in the English language in the current generation. A sixth volume is in the works.Epstein's 92nd essay, titled "I'm History," is characteristically civilized, civil and courageous.

WHEN Marvin Brody died recently in San Francisco at age 80, the business world lost a guiding star. He was an unusual man and an important force in shaping a new model of cooperation between management and labor. But, because he always worked behind the scenes, few people knew of him.Brody was a socialist and a union man to the core; yet his ideas went against the grain of traditional unionism. Convinced that management and labor had to work together if the American economy was to survive, he helped establish a prototype of labor relations at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., or NUMMI, the celebrated GM-Toyota joint venture in Fremont, Calif.

dTC "Blake: A Biography," by Peter Ackroyd. Alfred A. Knopf. 399 pages. $35.The great English poet William Blake lived out his life, as biographer Peter Ackroyd writes, ""in a world which distrusted and despised him." Blake produced not only superlative poetry but engravings and paintings, which made him, along with Turner, one of the great artists of his time. There is ample room now, two centuries after Blake wrote such poems as ""The Tyger" and ""London," for a dozen new biographies.Peter Ackroyd is England's most imaginative biographer.

Baltimore radicalism has lost one of its cornerstones: New Era Bookstore in the 400 block Park Avenue has gone out of business.Since its opening three decades ago, New Era, which was closely linked to the U.S. Communist Party, was the city's main purveyor of Marxist literature. Publications from the Soviet Union, China and Cuba could be found there as could an impressive array of fringe newspapers from the United States. The store also had one of the best selections of black-related books and magazines in the city.

In his first bid for public office, Democrat Kostas Alexakis knows the odds don't generally favor little-known candidates who take on seven-term incumbents like Republican Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest. He also knows that Democratic voters in the far-flung 1st Congressional District frequently cross party lines to support Gilchrest. Alexakis, 50, is challenging the veteran lawmaker on the one issue that has defined Gilchrest's public career -- the environment, and the Chesapeake Bay in particular.

Michael Rae is on a diet. A serious diet. Subsisting largely on "loads and loads and loads of vegetables," he consumes 1,800 to 2,000 calories a day, about 25 percent fewer than the USDA recommends for adult males. "In truth, I'm a little bit hungry most of the time," he said. "You get used to that, although it can be distracting." The regimen has lowered his libido and can also make him snappish. One other fact about Rae - unlike most other dieters, he's already thin. Very thin - 6 feet tall and 117 pounds.

LOS ANGELES -- Among generations of Southern California surfers, Dewey Weber has long been considered a legend, "a neon sign of surfing" whose longboard designs and surfing antics were synonymous with the sport.Mr. Weber, who lived his life searching for the perfect wave, was found dead Wednesday night in his suburban Hermosa Beach surfboard shop. He died of liver problems at age 53, police said."He was one of my first heroes," says Lance Carson, a friend of Mr. Weber's and a surfer featured in the 1966 Bruce Brown surfing film, "The Endless Summer."

FROM HOME and abroad voices have begun to counsel America that with communism's death, the world must prepare for a new threat -- radical Islam.This threat is symbolized by the Middle Eastern Muslim fundamentalist, a Khomeini-like creature armed with a radical ideology and nuclear weapons, intent on launching a violent jihad, or holy war, against Western civilization.The image has been magnified by the trial of a group of Muslim terrorists from the Middle East in the bombing of New York's World Trade Center.

In 2010, a blond-haired girl with a sweet smile stood before the "America's Got Talent" studio audience and millions of TV viewers. The 10-year-old proceeded to sing about asking her daddy to grant her request. So far, so normal. But if the words had an appropriately childlike nature, the music was anything but juvenile - it was the aria "O mio babbino caro" from Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi," ordinarily sung by sopranos who have at the very least reached their late teens, and who have gone through years of operatic training.

At first glance, Dayvon Love is easy to overlook. At 5 foot 9, he has average height and a slightly larger than average build. As he carefully takes in everything and everyone in a room, he might initially seem painfully shy. So when he finally speaks, his observations can hit you like a punch you had no idea was coming. He says that in his experience as a teacher, most Baltimore City Public Schools students think of your average teacher as "someone who's not cool or smart enough to do anything else.