A COSMOPOLITAN LAWYER: JUST SOME READINGS I HAVE ENJOYED LATELY

First, this blog replaces my previous blog, thecosmoplitanlawyerblogspot.com . Second, unlike that earlier blog, the present one is primarily meant as a record of my readings. It is not meant to suggest that others will be or should be interested in what I read. And third, in a sense, it is a public diary of one who is an alien in his own American culture. A person who feels at home just about anywhere, except in his birthplace . . . America.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

STEFAN ZWEIG

George Prochnik, The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World (New York: Overlook Press, 2014) ("E. M. Forster recommended Zweig's Erasmus to his English audience as a 'brilliant and true' historical study--as well as a personal meditation by a writer who was himself consumed by an eternal theme: 'Thought and Understanding' or 'Passion and Power'? Though Zweig didn't hide the faults of Erasmus, who 'was not brave' and 'disliked defining his attitude,' or vilify Luther, he showed why, in the long term, tolerance was the 'major instrument in the upward movement ' of humanity. 'It is the power to understand people not the power to boss them that distinguishes us from the apes,' Forster wrote, adding that Stefan Zweig himself had lived by this principle." Id. at 128. Also see A. O. Scott, "Man Without a Country, NYT Book Review,.Sunday, 6/15/2014.).