Edward Berenson

On his book The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story

Cover Interview of May 06, 2012

Lastly

As America’s most visible icon, the Statue of Liberty has always been vulnerable to commercial and political exploitation. A great many advertisers have used it to hawk their products; politicians have made it a backdrop for their campaigns; celebrities, souvenir makers, and even a Las Vegas casino have had it serve their own unlofty designs. Last fall, Lady Gaga joined in, appearing on a prominent magazine cover as a bikini-clad Statue of Liberty, her hair teased into the seven spokes of Liberty’s crown.

But despite these often crass and kitschy assaults, Bartholdi’s great green goddess has shrugged off every attempt to debase it. Thanks to her timeless Neoclassical design and spectacular perch in New York harbor, the Statue of Liberty has maintained its dignity, its ability to represent cherished values and ideals. If Lady Gaga can’t trivialize Lady Liberty, nothing can.

history / america / 19th century / architecture / france / symbols / monuments / bartholdi frederic auguste / statue of liberty /

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009