His survivor’s guilt and his grief are inextricably entwined, and at the very end of the book he admits that they breed in him “bogus saintliness” and “masochism.” He also, it seems to me, reveals in ...

David Rieff laments the disasters that U.S.-led democracy promotion has caused: To put the matter even more pointedly, after all the harm the United States has done in the Arab Middle East over the ...

The duty to remember—especially to remember victims lost to political evil—has become one of the most commanding mantras of our culture. Yet it is astonishing how recently this imperative became so ...

David Rieff, a well-recognized author in his own right, is also the son of Susan Sontag, one of America’s defining writers and essayists from the contemporary period. Sontag experienced three ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. David Rieff is the bête noire of the international humanitarian relief and human ...

To David Rieff and his viewpoint that would abandon aid to hundreds of thousands in Myanmar rather than engage in a confrontation with a hostile government, I would ask his point of view if his son or ...

Thomas Lynch is a poet, essayist and funeral director. His books include "The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade" and "Still Life in Milford." LIKE Susan Sontag, my mother died of cancer.