THE ------- OF MAN, AMERICA 1933-1973

Mark Greif, The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("What purpose is served by delineating the core of the human? Or, in an older nomenclature, the 'nature' or 'condition of Man'? The project recurs in the history of thought. It is not purely continuous. Against a background murmur that may be ceaseless emerge audible moments of conversation and command." Id. at ix. 'An impressive number of books (some famous, many forgotten) that appeard in the United States in the period 1933-1973 carried a particular kind of title ['The ------- of Man']." Id. at ix. "Having dug through this material, I will argue that the discourse it reveals form the midcentury age of the 'crisis of man' is historically indispensable. I will not, however, be arguing that the discourse was wise, or either good or bad. Exhuming history should not require that we venerate it, only understand its constitution and effects. And the discourse was precisely of that peculiar imperative-interrogative type I believe we may often misunderstand or mischaracterize." Id. at x. "The nobility of the Great Books was always synonymous with an idea of liberal education, advancing a simple position: men were the same in all times. Every age could produce great thinkers who examined the same human problems from their own vantage points and recorded the results. Even though the material conditions of life might change, the answers human beings had given would always be relevant. We today, will best learn to be excellent, free men once we consider all the best results from the past as the basis for answering the questions of our own times." Id. at 194. "One of the peculiarities of intellectual history is that the most extreme positions taken after a particular conjunction of surprising events, outliers in this own times, periodically turn out to be lasting or, at least, recurring positions for subsequent years. Perhaps it is a consequence of the willingness by an extreme thinker to break out of commentatators' natural tendency to assimilate events to whatever has been happening already. Perhaps it is simply that extreme ideas have a different kind of salience, marking out peaks (absurd peaks, sometimes, to be sure) against flatter intellectual history, which have a greater usefulness by their newness, their breaking of routine, or the utility to attribute them to single figures rather than the zeitgeist or conventional wisdom." Id. at 73-74.).

SUGGESTED FICTION

Sherwood Anderson, Collected Stories, edited by Charles Baxter (New York: Library of America, 2012).

Paul Beatty, The Sellout: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015) (See Kevin Young, "How He Came Up," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/12/2015.).

Elizabeth Berg, The Dream Lover: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2015).

Fatima Bhutto, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon: A Novel (New York: Penguin Press, 2015) (See Lorraine Adams, "Brothers at War," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/19/2015.).

T. C. Boyle, The Harder They Come: A Novel (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015) (See Dana Spiotta, "Don't Tread on Them," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/12/2015.).

Robert Coover, The Brunists ay of Wrath: A Novel (Ann Arbor, MI: Dzanz Books, 2014).

Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists (Ann Arbor, MI: Dzanz Books, 2015).

Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel (New York: Scribner, 2014).

Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hausfrau: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2015) (See Elisa Albert, "Tinged With Blue," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/29/2015.)

Ryan Gattis, All Involved: A Novel (New Yoek: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015).

David Goodis, Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s: Dark Passage; Nightfall; The Burglar; The Moon in the Gutter; Street of No Return, edited by Robert Polito (New York: Library of America, 2012).

Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel (New York: Riverbed Press, 2015).

Aislinn Hunter, The World Before Us: A Novel (London & New York: Hogarth, 2014) (See Penelope Lively, "Curiouser and Curiouser," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/19/2015.).

Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life: A Novel (New York: Tyrant Books, 2014) (See Clancy Martin, "No Return," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 12/21/2014.).

Toni Morrison, God Help the Child: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2015) (See Kara Walker, "Flesh of My Flesh," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/19/2015.).

Sandra Newman, The Country of Ice Cream Star: A Novel (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015) (See Andrew Ervin, "Bioperversity," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/29/2015.).

Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato: A Novel (New York: Broadway Books, 1999).

Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade: A Novel (New York; Scribner, 2015) (See Katie Kitamura, "Prodigal Son," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/12/2015.).

Kirstin Valdez Quade, Night at the Fiestas: Stories (New York: Norton, 2015) (See Kyle Minor, "The Secret and the Sacred," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/29/2015).

Andrew Smith, Grasshopper Jungle: A History (New York: Dutton, 2014).

Gary K. Wolfe, ed., American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956: Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants; Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human; Leigh Brackett, The Long Tomorrow; Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man (New York; Library of America, 2012).

Rafael Yglesias, The Wisdom of Perversity: A Novel (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2015) (See Joyce Carol Oates, "Stealer of Souls," NYT Book Review, 4/5/2015.)

ENCOUNTERS

Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? (New York: Viking, 2012).

Elizabeth A. Fenn, Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People (New York: Hill & Wan,g, 2014). 

Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt, 2014) ("[F]or two and a half million years, there's been no advantage in being able to deal with extra heat, since temperatures never got much warmer than they are right now. In the ups and downs of the Pleistocene, we are at the crest of an up." "To find carbon dioxide levels (and therefore, ultimately, global temperatures) higher than today's requires going back a long way, perhaps as far as the mid-Miocene century, CO2 levels could reach a level not seen since the Antarctic palms of the Eocene, some fifty million years ago. Whether species still possess the features that allowed their ancestors to thrive in that ancient, warmer world is, at this point, impossible to say...." "if evolution works the way it usually does,' Silman said, 'then the extinction scenario--we don't call it extinction, we talk about it as "biotic attrition," a nice euphemism--well, it starts to look apoclytic'." Id. at 171-172.).

Martin Meredith, The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014).

Wolfgang Reinhard, ed., Empires and Encounters, 1350-1750 (A History of the World) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2015) (From "Europe and the Atlantic World": "Academically trained lawyers represented a new, up-and-coming group who, acting in the service of popes and kings, had a vested interest in increasing their power. For unlike many of their aristocratic and ecclesiastical; predecessors in the service of princes, they did not lead an independent existence; rather, they were completely reliant on their paymasters for their position and advancement. While on the one had this does represent the beginnings of the modern monopoly of lawyers as the state class, on the other the continuing decentralized structure of the political word also facilitated the growth of bodies of royal lawyers with a strong claim on autonomous status in England, France, and Spain. Sometimes, these groups even dared gainsay the monarch on the question of what benefited the cause of revolutionary resistance to the crown in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively." Id. at 735, 814-815.).

Pat Shipman, The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2015).

THE REVOLUTIONARY GENERATION IN IRELAND

R. F. Foster, Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923 (New York & London: Norton, 2015)("[T]he fact remains that during this era enough people--especially young people--changed their minds about political possibilities to bring about a revolution against the old order, which included not only government by Britain but the constitutional nationalism of the previous generation." Id. at xv-xvi.).

ANY ONE OF US!

Asne Seierstad, One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway, translated for the Norwegian by Sarah Death (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2014, 2015) (Extremist? Or, madman? Which answer makes you feel most comfortable? Also, see Eric Schlosser, "Norwegian Woods," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/26/2015.).

THE LADY OF THE LOTUS-BORN

Keith Dowman, Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel, foreword by Trinley Norbu  (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1996) (From the foreword: "In the profound sutra system, the Dakini is called the Great Mother. 'Indescribable, unimaginable Perfection of Wisdom, /Unborn, unobstructed essence of sky, /She is sustained by self-awareness alone: / I bow down before the Great Mother of the Victorious Ones, past, present and future.' Thus it is written in the Great Paramita Sutra. In the precious tantric tradition, 'desirable, blissful wisdom is the essence of all desirable qualities, unobstructedly going and coming in endless space.' This wisdom is called 'the Sky Dancer', feminine wisdom, the Dakini." Id. at ix.From the back cover: "Yeshe Tsogyel, consort of Guru Padmasambhava, is one of the most famous of the enlightened women of Tibet. Few works deal with the spiritual practices of evolution of female aspirants, and for this reason Sky Dancer is virtually unique in the biographical literature of Tibet. Women are shown in an imminent position, and a path of practice is resented for initiates to emulate, Tsogyel's experiences and her detailed instructions other disciples are inspirational for today's practitioners.").

Yeshe Tsogyal, The Lotus-Born: The Life Story of Padasambhava, Composed by Yeshe Tsogyal, Revealed by Nyang Ral Nyima Oser, Forword by Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse, Clarification of the Life of Padmasambhava by Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Translated from the Tibetan by Erik Pema Kunsang, & Edited by Marcia Binder Schmidt (Boudhanath, Hong Kong & Esby: Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 2004) (From the back cover: "Padmasambhava, the Lotus-Born Indian mystic and tantric master, is second only to Buddha Shakyamuni as the most famous figure in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In the ninth century, he journeyed across the Himalayan Mountains to establish Buddhism for the people of Tibet. Now, more than one thousand years later, we are able to hear and be touched by the voice of a unique spiritual personality,as recorded by his chief disciple, the princess Yeshe Tsogyal, This legendary tale interweaves narration with timeless advice to all spiritual practitioners.").

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer: A Novel (New York: Grove Press, 2015) ("I had an abiding respect for the professionalism of career prostitutes, who wore their dishonesty more openly than lawyers, both of whom bill by the hour." Id. at 36. "Of course. To think of a mole as that which digs underground misunderstands the meaning of the mole as a spy. A spy's task is not to hide himself where no one can see him, since he will not be able to see anything himself. A spy's task is to hide where everyone can see him and where he can see everything. Now ask yourself: What can everyone see about you but you yourself cannot?" Id. at 168. Also see Philip Caputo, "Apocalypse Then," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/5/2015.).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT AS LIBERAL ARTS PROGRAMS UNDERGO FUNDING CUTS

Ken Cuthbertson, A Complex Fate: William L. Shirer and the American Century (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015) ("Conspiracy, like isolationism, is one of most pernicious and illogical recurring themes in American history." Id. at 373. "Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian David McCullough, among others, has decried Americans' ignorance of history. In a 1983 appearance before a Senate committee that was studying the need for programs to educate history and civics teachers, McCullough warned that such ignorance is not triviality; it can and does pose a threat to national security. '[He] pointed out that only three United States colleges require a course on the Constitution and they are all military institutions: the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy.'" Id. at 484 (citation omitted). Also, see generally Nicholas Mulish, "The Story of a Lifetime," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/14/2015.).

WHITEWASHED DAYS OF RAGE TO IGNORE AMERICA'S LIE: EQUALITY AND JUSTICE

Bryan Burrough, Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence (New York: Penguin Press, 2015) (See Maurice Isserman, "Blow-Up," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/3/2015. The text lacks footnotes (that is, documentation or substantiation of facts). Burrough does not write objectively, doesn't even really try. Assuming Days of Rage provides a coherent narrative, there is little reason for treating it as the more or less balanced, let alone "correct" narrative. And, there is no effort to identify, suggest, or articulate opposing narratives. No deep analysis of the character or motivations of the players. The members of the underground come across as opportunistic, misguided, often spoiled white kids or simply angry black people, with a strong tendency toward playing with violence (violence as performance art). What is not here is any sense that mainstream American society was corrupt, that there might have been many things worthy of being angry about, and there might have been good reasons for not believing the normal political channels could be pursued to bring about constructive change. Stereotypical bad radicals. Stereotypical good establishment, good cops, etc., who, out of frustration, stress,  etc., --but with worthy intentions--simply overreach. Burrough's book should be titled, "Playing with Anarchy.').

TECHNO SAPIENS? BRAVER NEWER WORLD?

Wendell Wallach, A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond Our Control ( New York: Basic Books, 2015) ("In the case of AI, the hype machine ritually exaggerates the importance of each step forward, such as IBM's Deep Blue beating the chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov or IBM's Watson winning at the TV quiz show Jeopardy. Both victory were truly noteworthy, and yet each revealed new layers of complexity that must be surmounted for full AI to be realized." "In the realm of human enhancements, the remarkable feat of a paraplegic maneuvering his wheelchair with thought alone gets exaggerated into proof that minds and machines will soon be fully integrated. Hype, hope, and wishful thinking overwhelm any realistic appraisal of the difficult thresholds that lie ahead. The media discovered that innovations accompanied by exaggerated claims attract views, but eyes roll and the audience switches channels when critics share their doubts. In the U.S., challenges to the conventional wisdom that we can achieve anything we set our minds to are treated as cynical defilements of a revealed truth. In this narrative, the power of positive thinking always prevails." "Regardless of the slow pace of change in realizing major enhancements, and regardless of the fact that new layers if complexity make it unclear how far off it all is, both the transhumanists and their critics have bought into the same basic narrative. Scientific mastery, both believe, will soon permit wholesale alteration of the human genome, mind, and body. The upshot will be easy access to superior skills, soon followed by new races of cyborgs and techno sapiens whose capabilities will far exceed those of the average person live today. The sense of inevitability which accompanies these projections can be energy-sapping for people who feel that the future will not need us--at least not as we currently are. Only time can reveal whether skepticism with respect to the transhuman dream represents a failure of imagination or if the dream itself epitomizes imagination run wild. Even should extraordinary enhancements be possible, there is nothing inevitable about the future course of humanity. Plenty of inflection points will appear for slowing or altering the trajectory of technologies that might be adopted for enhancement purposes, We do have a say. Inflection points lie on the horizon and a few are already perceivable." Id. at 163-164.).

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, introduced by Ursula K. Le Guin, illustrated by Finn Dean (London: The Folio Society, 2013) ("Not philosophers, but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society." Id. at 4.).

BOSWELL!!

Robert Zaretsky, Boswell's Enlightenment (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2015) (see Andrew O'Hagan, "He Changed the Game and Dared to Know," NYRB, 6/4/2015.).

THE PERVERTED AMERICAN DREAM

Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power (New York: Little, Brown, 2015) (See Naomi Klein, "Greed Is Good, for Some," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/22/2015.).

Steve Fraser, Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2005) ("In a sense, the farmer was the looniest speculator, the most deluded gambler of them all. He was wagering he would somehow master this fathomlessly intricate global game, pay off his many debts, and come out with enough extra to pay another round. On top of that he was betting on the kindness of Mother Nature, always supremely risky. Professional gamblers, however, spun the wheel voluntarily. The farmer had no choice. He was trying to reproduce himself and a way of life, the family farm. Instead he was drawn into a kind of social suicide. The family farm and the whole network of small-town life that it patronized were being washed away into the rivers of capital and credit that flowed toward the railroads and banks and commodity exchanges, toward the granaries, wholesalers, and numerous other intermediaries that stood between the farmer and the world market. Disappearing into all the reservoirs of impersonal capital accumulation, the family farm remained a privileged way of life only in sentimental memory." Id. at 197. From the book jacket: "For more than two hundred years, Americans have enjoyed a love-hate relationships with Wall Street. Long an object of suspicion and fear, it eventually came to be seen as a more inviting place, an open road to wealth and freedom. Peeling away the layers of myth surrounding this fabled street, Steve Fraser shows that the remarkable transformation of Wall Street as a cultural icon--its odyssey from perdition to salvation, from darkness into light--is a story that goes to the heart of the American character." "Long before we became a shareholder nation, back when only a minuscule part of the country's population invested, Wall Street had already provoked America's collective imagination. From the days when Alexander Hamilton was forced to confess his marital infidelities in order to defend his vision of the Republic's financial future, to Gordon Gekko's mantra 'Greed is good' in the movie Wall Street, Americans have always been preoccupied with the virtues and sins of the stock market." "Indeed, Wall Street is the place where we have constantly returned to wrestle with our ancestral attitudes about work and play, equality and wealth, God and mammon, heroes and villains, national purpose and economic well-being. Beginning in the Revolutionary era, Every Man a Speculator reveals the extraordinary power of Wall Street and its impact on our democracy; the moral dilemma posed for a society committed to the work ethic yet lured by the promise of instant wealth; and the chronic tension between our native egalitarianism and the forces of social hierarchy unleashed by the Street. In doing so, it spans the ages, from Captain Kidd's sojourn on the Street through the Civil War and the Great Depression to the present day when power brokers stalk the canyons of lower Manhattan speculating on the fate of whole nations." "In Every Man a Speculator, Steve Fraser brings this epic history to life with colorful tales of confidence men and aristocrats, Napoleonic financiers and reckless adventurers, master builders and roguish destroyers, men to the manor born and men from nowhere. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, this is a gripping, powerful chronicle that casts new light on the metamorphosis of our nation's most cherished values.").

Steve Fraser, Wall Street: America's Dream Palace (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2008).