INTELLECTUAL LIFE, INDEPENDENCE, SELF-CRITICAL REFLECTION

Irving Howe, A Voice Still Heard: Selected Essays of Irving Howe, edited by Nina Howe, foreword by Morris Dickstein (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2014) (From "This Age of Conformity" [1954]: "But no one who has a live sense of what the literary life has been and might still be, in either Europe or this country, can accept the notion that the academy is the natural home of intellect." Id. at 3. 9. "No formal ideology or program is entirely adequate for coping with the problems that intellectuals face in the twentieth century. [] The most glorious vision of the intellectual life's still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have." Id. at 25. From "What's the Trouble? Social Crisis, Crisis of Civilization, or Both" [1971]: "I want . . . to assume that we cannot be 'certain,' as many of us were in the past, that there is an ineluctable motion within history toward a progressive culmination. I want to discard any faith in the necessary movement of History--even its much-advertised cunning. Not that I would create instead a gnostic melodrama in which man stands forever pitted against his own history, a promethean loneliness against the runaway of civilization. I simply want to put the question aside, and then to say: the obligation to defend and extend freedom in its simplest and most fundamental aspects is the sacred task of the intellectual, the one task he must not compromise even when his posture seems intractable, or unreasonable, or hopeless, or even when it means standing alone against fashionable shibboleths like Revolution and The Third World." Id. at 139, 159. From "Introduction: Twenty-five Years of Dissent" [1979]: "To be a socialist in Europe means to belong to a movement commonly accepted as part of democratic political life, a contender in the battle of interest and idea. To be a socialist in America means to exist precariously on the margin of our politics, as critic, gadfly, and reformer, struggling constantly for a bit of space. Lonely and beleaguered as it may be, this position of the American socialist has, nevertheless, an advantage: it forces one to the discomforts of self-critical reflection." Id. at 198, 198. Also, see generally Franklin Foer, "Partisan Reviewer," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/18/2015.).

A THEORY OF TRADE EXPECTATIONS

Dale C. Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) (From the bookcover: "Does growing economic interdependence among great powers increase or decrease the chance of conflict and war? Liberals argue that the benefits of trade give states an incentive to stay peaceful. Realists contend that trade compels states to struggle for vital raw materials and markets. Moving beyond the stale liberal-realist debate, Economic Interdependence and War lays out a dynamic theory of expectations that shows under what specific conditions interstate commerce will reduce or heighten the risk of conflict between nations." "Taking a broad look at cases spanning  two centuries, from the Napoleonic and Crimean wars to the more recent Cold War crises, Dale Copeland demonstrates that when leaders have positive expectations of the future trade environment they want to reman at peace in order to secure the economic benefits that enhance long-term power. When, however, these expectation turn negative, leaders are likely to fear a loss of access to raw materials and markets, giving them more incentives to initiate crises to protect their commercial interests. The theory of trade expectations hold important implication for the understanding of Sini-American relations since 1985 and for the direction these relations will likely take over the next two decades." "Economic Interdependence and War offers sweeping insights into historical and contemporary global politics and the actual nature of democratic versus economic peace.").

WHY YOU SHOULD FEEL INCREASINGLY VULNERABLE

Benjamin Wittes & Gabriella Blum, The Future of Violence: Roberts and Germs, Hackers and Drones--Confronting a New Age of Threat (New York: Basic Books, 2015) ("[A[ kind law of technological development: technologies that distribute power and capability will also tend to distribute dependency, exposure, and vulnerability." Id. at 48. "The basic problem is inescapable. Any time a technology radically enhances what people can do and thus gives people the ability to exert power over one another--by enabling them to kill one another at a distance in the case of guns, to glean an enormous amount of information about one another in the case of the mosaic*, to watch other remotely in the case of domestic drones, and to manipulate the basic generic structures of the foods we eat in the case of genetically modified crops--there will be disputes over that technology's use. And government at some level has to mediate those disputes if the conflicts do not resolve on their own in a fashion that wins widespread acceptance." Id. at 220. *"Your life and that of every other person in an advanced industrialized country produces a mosaic of digital information stored on public and private computer servers around the world. Most of the tiles of your personal mosaic do not reside in your hands. They consists of the electronic fingerprints you leave with increasing frequency over the course of your day-to-day existence on computers, controlled by third parties: they are the websites you visit, the toll booths you pass through, the purchases you make online or with credit cards, the prescriptions you fill, the phone numbers you dial, the e-mails you send, the library books you check out, the specify pages you have read on your Kindle, the restaurants at which you make online reservations, the steps yo take as measured by your Fitbit, the photos you post on Facebook, and the photos that others post of you." Id. at 45-46. "Modern technology enables individuals to wield the destructive power of states. Individuals, including you personally, can potentially be attacked with impunity from anywhere in the world. Technology makes less relevant many of the traditional concepts around which our laws and political organization for security have evolved. National borders, jurisdictional boundaries, citizenship, and the distinction between national and international, between act of war and crime, and between state and private action all offer divides less sharp than they used to be. Our nation--and every nation--can face attack through channels controlled and operated not by governments but by the private sector and by means against which governments lack the ability to defend, making private actors pivotal to defense." Id. at 5.).

WAR CAPITALISM!!

Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014) ("The movement of capital, people, goods, and raw materials around the globe and the connections forged between distant areas of the world are at the very core of the grand transformation of capitalism and they are at the core of this book." "Such a thorough and rapid re-creation of the world was possible only because of the emergence of new ways of organizing production, trade, and consumption. Slavery, the expropriation of indigenous peoples, imperial expansion, armed trade, and the assertion of sovereignty over people and land by entrepreneurs were at it core. I call this system war capitalism." Id. at xv. "The book argue also that for most of capitalism's history the process of globalization and the needs of nation-states were not conflicting, as is often believed, but instead mutually reinforced one another.  If our allegedly new global age is truly a revolutionary departure from the past, the departure is not the degree of global connection but the fact that capitalists are for the first time able to emancipate themselves from particular nation-states, the very institutions that in the past enabled their rise." Id. at xxi.  Also, see generally Adam Hochschild, "Dyed in Blood," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/4/2015.).

FOR ALL OUR SELF-GLORIFICATION, WE HUMANS ARE RATHER PATHETIC

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015) ("Impressive, no doubt, but we mustn't harbour rosy illusions about 'mass cooperation networks' . . . 'Cooperation' sounds very altruistic, but is not always voluntary and seldom egalitarian. Most human cooperation networks have been geared towards oppression and exploitation. The peasants paid for the burgeoning cooperation networks with their precious food surpluses, despairing when the tax collector wiped out an entire year of hard labour with a single stroke of his imperial pen. The famed Roman amphitheatres were often build by slaves so that wealthy and idle Romans could watch other slaves engage in vicious gladiatorial combat. Even prisons and concentration camps are cooperation networks, and can function only because thousands of strangers somehow manage to coordinate their actions." Id. at 104. "Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or services (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better." Id. at 115. "We cannot explain the choices that history makes, but we can say something very important about them: history's choices are not made for the benefit of humans. There is absolutely no proof that human well-being inevitably improves as history rolls along. There is no proof that cultures that are beneficial to humans must inexorably succeed and spread, while less beneficial cultures disappear...." Id. at 241. "People continue to conduct a heroic struggle against racism without noticing that the battlefront has shifted, and that the place of racism in imperial ideology has now been replaced by 'culturism'. There is no such word, but it's about time we coined it. Among today's elites, assertions about the contrasting merits of diverse human groups are almost always couched in terms of historical differences between cultures rather than biological differences between race. We no longer say, 'It's in their blood.' We say, 'It'sin their culture.'" Id. at 303.).

THE DEATH OF THE UNIVERSITY. THE DEATH OF EDUCATION. THE DEATH OF THE MIND.

Lars Iyer, Wittgenstein Jr: A Novel (Brooklyn & London: Melville House, 2014) ("It was the new dons who made Oxford unbearable for his brother, Wittgenstein says. The new-style philosophers! English philosophy has become business philosophy, grant-chasing philosophy, his brother told him. The Oxford philosophy department dreams only of being Big Philosophy, his brother said. Of founding Philosophy Parks, of donning philosophical lab coats . . . There are Oxford chairs in the desecration of philosophy, his brother told him. In the murder of philosophy. In the destruction of philosophy. In the strangulation of philosophy. His brother overheard a don use the phrase learning competencies, Wittgenstein says. His brother was asked to demonstrate the real-world applicability of his fundamental work in logic. His brother was expected too make a case for the impact of his thought on the world at large. His brother said nothing, Wittgenstein says. He kept mute. But he knew he had to leave the high table, and to leave oxford. He knew he had no choice but to leave England." Id. at 63-64. So true? So sad! So frightening!).  

SUGGESTED FICTION BY DANIEL KEHLMANN

Daniel Kehlmann, F: A Novel, translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway (New York: Pantheon Books, 2014) (F is for family. F is for fortune. F is for fake. F is for the lack of faith. F is of forgery. F is for fraud. F is for fate.).

Daniel Kehlmann, Fame: A Novel, translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010) ("As an old doctor had said to her years ago, people who have experienced nothing love to tell stories while people who have experienced a great deal suddenly have no stories to tell at all." Id. at 23.).

Daniel Kehlmann, Me and Kaminski: A Novel, translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway (New York: Vintage Books, 2009) ("Ambition is like a childhood illness. You get over it and it strengthens you." Id. at 114.).

Daniel Kehlmann, Measuring the World: A Novel, translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006) ("A man who traveled far, he said, learned many things, Some of them about himself." Id. at 153.).

THE LESSON OF 9/11/2001: WE ARE NOT COMPLEX, AND CANNOT WRAP OUR MINDS AROUND THE COMPLEX

Claudia Rankine,  Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (Minneapolis, Mn: Graywolf Press, 2004) ("It strikes me what that the attack on the World Trade Center stole from us is our willingness to be complex. Or what the attack on the World trade Center revealed to us is that we were never complex. We might want to believe that we can condemn and we can love and we can condemn because we love our country, but that's too complex." Id. at 91.).

THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Harold Holzer, ed., President Lincoln Assassinated!!: The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning (New York:Library of America, 2015).

ON UNIVERSITY. I FEEL THE UGH!

Elliot Perlman, The Street Sweeper: A Novel (New York: Riverhead, 2012) (Dad, what can I say' 'I don't know, Charlie, what can you say?' 'The university's a microcosm of society.' 'Is that what you can say? Is that all you can say?" 'Well now, what exactly are you saying? How exactly is all or even any of this my fault?' 'Charlie, I don't mean you personally. I mean you academics. You all sit there watching the flames as the barn burns down crying, "How's this our fault? We didn't do it!"' 'What exactly would you have us do, me or any of us?' 'Charlie, how did you get to be this age, sitting in this office with your name and title on the door, chair of the History Department, and you're not ashamed to be asking me for that?' 'Dad, leaving the question of my shame to one side, what the hell would you have me do?' 'You should be speaking out publicly about these things. You guys should be writing letters. You should be organizing like-minded people to do these things. You should be giving encouragement, comfort and support to those people, students, faculty, people around the city who don't have the chance to be heard like you do but who fear this institution is going to hell in a handbasket instead of . . .' 'Instead of what?' 'Instead of staying back late in this office leaving your wife and daughter at home so you can write narrowly focused arcane academic articles to be read by a handful of people just to keep your quota up and all of it merely in the service of your own aggrandizement.'" Id. at 412-413.).

Elliot Perlman, Three Dollars Street Sweeper: A Novel (New York: Riverhead, 1998).

ON LIBRARIES

Niall Williams, History of the Rain: A Novel (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014) ("What none of us realized and what at first of course Virgil didn't realize either was that the library he was building would in fact become a working tool, a consultancy, and that it was leading somewhere. He had no intention of writing. He loved reading, that was all.  And he read books that he thought so far beyond anything that he himself could dream of achieving that any thought of writing instantly evaporated into the certainty of failure. How could you even start? Read Dickens,read Dostoevsky. Read Thomas Hardy. Read any pages in any story of Chekhov, and any reasonable person would go ah lads, put down their pencil and walk away." Id. at 260-261. From the "Acknowledgements": "My father believed in education, at a time when education meant books. Twice a month he took us to the library, and those visits remain among the most cherished memories of my growing up. Apart for the browsing and the borrowing, just to be for an hour in the physical company of so many books was inspiring and moving in a way that is perhaps ha4d to explain day, but which for which I will always be grateful" Id. at 357.).

LIFE GOES ON

Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (New York: Grove Press, 2001).

Richard Flanagan, The Unknown Terrorist: A Novel (New York: Grove Press, 2006) ("The idea that love is not enough is a particularly painful one. In the face of its truth, humanity has for centuries tried to discover in itself evidence that love is the greatest force on earth." Id. at 1. "Everything takes its accustomed course even when life is at its most terrible, and people know, they always know, but life goes on and the excuses for doing nothing other than going on with it are made." Id. at 319.).

Richard Flanagan, Wanting: A Novel (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008).

TO MAN'S GREAT DETRIMENT

David Duchovny, Holy Cow (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015) ("We are all animals and we have our place in the womb of Mother Nature. Only man has separated himself form the great chain o being and from all the other animals, and I think that has been to his great detriment, and sadness, and to ours." Id. at 203-204.).

APRIL IS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

Amiri Baraka, S O S: Poems 1961-2013, selected by Paul Vangelisti (New York; Grove Press, 2014) (See Claudia Rankine, "Truth to Power," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/15/2015.).

Mark Strand, Collected Poems (New York: Knopf, 2014).

WHITE PRIVILEGE, PHOENIX-STYLE

Andrew Needham, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2014) ("As in cities nationwide, New Deal housing policies made it virtually impossible for nonwhites to participate in the new, federally underwritten markets in residential property. Believing that integration represented a risk to stable property values, FHA official had, at the agency's inception, instituted policies that prevented the agency from insuring mortgages in neighborhoods with any significant nonwhite population while rejecting nonwhite applicants for homes in newly built subdivisions. These policies shaped the practices of the real estate industry in general. Real estate agents pledged to maintain the racial character of neighborhoods as a condition of licensing. 'That the entry of Non-Caucasian[s] into districts where distinctly Caucasian residents live tends to depress real estate values,' wrote realtor Stanly McMichaels in Real Estate Subdivisions, an industry textbook, 'is agreed to by practically all real estate subdividers and students of city life and growth.' Such agreements held firm in Phoenix. As local civil rights activist Lincoln Ragsdale testified at a hearing of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held in Phoenix in 1962, out of 31,000 homes built by three builders in northeastern Phoenix, homes all 'built directly or indirectly, through FHA commitments,' not a single home, 'not one,' Ragsdale testified, 'has been sold to a Negro.'" Id. at 83-84. From the bookjacket: "In 1940, Phoenix was a small, agricultural city of sixty-five thousand, and the Navajo Reservation was an open landscape of scattered sheepherders. Forty years later, Phoenix had blossomed into a metropolis of 1.5 million people, and the territory of the Navajo Nation was home to two of the largest strip mines in the world. Five coal-burning power plants surrounded the reservation, generating electricity for export to Phoenix, Los Angles, and other cities. Exploring the postwar developments of these two very different landscapes, Power Lines tells the story of the far-reaching environmental and social inequalities of metropolitan growth, and the roots of the contemporary coal-fueled climate change crisis." "Andrew Needham explains how inexpensive electricity became a requirement for modern life in Phoenix--driving assembly lines and cooling the oppressive heat. Navajo officials initially hoped energy development would improve their lands too, but as ash piles marked their landscapes, air pollution filled the skies, and almost half of Navajo households remained without electricity, many Navajos came to view power lines as a sign of their subordination in the Southwest, Drawing together urban, environmental, and American Indian history, Needham demonstrates how power limes created unequal connections between distant landscapes and how environmental change associated with suburbanization reached far beyond the metropolitan frontier, Needham also offers a new account of postwar inequality, arguing that residents of the metropolitan periphery suffered similar patterns of marginalization as those faced in America's inner cities." "Telling how coal from Indian lands became the fuel of modernity in the Southwest, Power Lines explores the dramatic effects that this energy system has had on the people and environment of the region."). 

CULTURAL MINORITY RIGHTS?

Alan Patten, Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2014) ("The United States has always been a culturally diverse society, and new wave so of immigration add to this diversity every day. To mention just one measure, a startling one out of five Americans reports using a language other than English at home. To most Americans, however, the country's cultural diversity is not deeply consequential for its political morality. Cultural diversity is is one more source of the differences that are pursued and expressed in the private realms of family, neighborhood, market, and civil society. The enjoyment of these differences is appropriately safeguarded by the liberties entrenched in the American constitutional tradition. But many believe that these generic protections of private life are all that is called for in the way of respect or accommodation of cultural diversity. Most Americans would have little sympathy for the idea that public institutions ought officially to protect or accommodate the cultural differences that exist in their country." Id. at vii. "The core case I develop in favor of strong cultural rights revolves around two main claims. The first holds that the liberal state has a responsibility to be neutral toward the various conceptions of the good that its citizens affirm. The second claims that, in certain domains, the only way for the state to discharge its responsibility for neutrality is by extending and protecting specific minority cultural rights. Although various qualifications and provisos are introduced along the way, and the rights that are justified must defeat countervailing considerations, the argument demonstrates why in some contexts, specific strong cultural rights are indeed a requirement of liberal justice." Id. at 27.).

William H. Frey, Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2015) ("The diversity explosion that the United States is now experiencing is ushering in the most demographically turbulent period in the country's recent history. By 'turbulent' I do not mean that the nation is about to experience sharp conflicts over its growing diversity. In fact, I believe just the opposite. As the United States comes to understand the magnitude and significance of this new diversity for its demographic and economic future and for its interconnectedness in an increasingly global village, it will seek to find ways to both embrace and nurture its diversity. This demographic turbulence, rather, offers the vibrancy, hope, and promise associated with young generations of new minorities from a variety of backgrounds interacting with older minorities and white Americans in their pursuit of opportunities in a country that is in dire need of more youth. [T]he growth of young, new minority populations from recent immigration and somewhat higher fertility is providing the country with a 'just in time' infusion of growth as the largely white U.S. popiuation continues to age." Id. at 239.).