Resurrection

How Jeff Taylor came back from the dead

From our US edition

I’ve long regarded Iowa’s Jeff Taylor as one of the most interesting politicians in America – and that was before I knew that he had once died and come back to life. Jeff, 65, is a political science professor at Dordt University and a two-term state senator from a rural district in northwest Iowa. He’s written books on Bob Dylan, William Jennings Bryan, the decentralist tradition in American politics and other worthy American subjects that are of no demonstrable interest to, say, Marco Rubio or Hakeem Jeffries. He is thoughtful, mild-mannered, affably learned and willing to make radical breaks with the corporate stooges of the Republican establishment. And now he has written a book about the day he died. The driver turned off the siren and slowed down.

Bach’s Cello Suites represent a spiritual meditation — from the Nativity to the Resurrection

‘One player on four strings, with a bow.’ That’s what Bach’s six Cello Suites boil down to, says Steven Isserlis. It sounds simple enough, until you add more than 100 editions and 200 recordings into the equation, not to mention countless books, chapters and articles all wrestling with a work Isserlis calls ‘a Bible’ for cellists. And this tussle isn’t just a lofty question of meaning or interpretation either: we’re still arguing about the actual notes. Suddenly the numbers no longer add up. The cellist Isserlis released his award-winning account of the Cello Suites in 2007.