SHIRLEY JACKSON

Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (New York & London: Liveright, 2016).

Miles Hyman, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery": The Authorized Graphic Adaptation (New York: Hill & Wang, 2016).

Shirley Jackson, Life Among the Savages (New York: Penguin Books, 1997).

Shirley Jackson, Raising Demons (New York: Penguin Books, 2015).

Joyce Carol Oates, "Shirley Jackson in Love and Death," New York Review of Books, October 27, 2016).

OUR FRIENDS HELP DEFINE WHO WE ARE.

Alexander Nehamas, On Friendship (New York: Basic Books, 2016) ("Each one of our friendships--some more, some less--contributes an element of individuality to our character. Each one leads us in particular direction that no other can duplicate. That, of course, may result in a shattered self moving in different directions without rhyme or reason, unity, or coherent. But such shattered self is what we are all faced with at first--and accidental self, made of of haphazard elements, picked up at different times, in different contexts, from different people, from various books, pictures, and music, from diverse social, political, and cultural environments. Individuality requires the organization of these elements into a whole within which they are no longer haphazard--a coherent whole to which each makes a distinct contribution. But coherence is not enough. The whole these elements compose must also be distinctive. It must have a style that express one's distinctive character." Id. at 221-222.).

WHEN YOU REALLY THINK ABOUT IT . . .

A FREE PRESS IS THE COUNTRY'S FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE AGAINST WOULD BE DICTATORS AND AUTOCRATS.

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN ON LIQUID LOVE

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds (New York: Polity Press, 2003).

ZYGMUNT DAUMAN ON LIQUID SURVEILLANCE

Zygmunt Bauman & David Lyon, Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation (New York: Polity Press, 2013).

APARTHEID AS PERFECT RACISM AND POLICE STATE

Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2016) ("Apartheid was perfect racism. . . ."  "As the British Empire fell, the Afrikaner rose up to claim South Africa as his rightful inheritance. To maintain power in the face of the country's rising and restless black majority, the government realized they needed a newer and more robust set of tools. They set up a formal commission to go out and study institutionalized racism all over the world. They went to Australia. They went to the Netherlands. They went to America. They saw what worked, what didn't. Then they came back and published a report, and the government used that knowledge to build the most advanced system of racial oppression know to man." "Apartheid was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control. A full compendium of those laws would run more that three thousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should be easy enough for any American to understand. In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid." Id. at 19-20.).

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN ON THE CONSUMING LIFE

Zygmunt Bauman, Consuming Life (New York: Polity Press, 2007) ("The consumerist economy thrives on the turnover of commodities, and is seen as booming when more money changes hands; and whenever money changes hands, some consumer products are traveling to the dump. Accordingly, in a society of consumers the pursuit of happiness--the purpose most often invoked and used as bait in marketing campaigns aimed at boosting consumers' willingness to part with their money (earned money, or money expected to be earned)--tends to be refocused from making things or their appropriation (not to mention their storage) to their disposal--just what is needed of the gross national product is to grow. For the consumerist economy, the previous focus, now by and large abandoned, portends the worst of worries: the stagnation, suspension or fading of buying zeal. The second focus, however, bodes rather well: another round of shopping. Unless supplements by the urge to get rid of and discard, the urge for mere acquisition and possession would store up trouble for the future." Id. at 36-37. "If freedom of choice is granted in theory but unattainable in practice, the pain of hopelessness will surely be topped with the ignominy of haplessness because the ability to cope with life's challenges tested daily is that very workshop in which the self-confidence of individuals, and so also their sense of human dignity and their self-esteem, are formed or melted away. Besides, without collective insurance there will hardly be much stimulus to political engagement--and certainly not for participation in a democratic ritual of elections, since salvation is unlikely to arrive indeed from a political state that is not, and refuses to be, a social state. Without social rights for all, a large and in all probability growing number of people will find their political rights useless and unworthy of their attention. If political rights are necessary to set social rights in place, social rights are indispensable to keep political rights in operation. The two rights need each other for their survival; that survival n only be their joint achievement." Id. at 141. Food for thought?).

Zygmunt Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumer? (Institute for Human Sciences Vienna Lecture Series) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2008).

Zygmunt Bauman, Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? (New York: Polity Press, 2013).

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN ON HAPPINESS AND THE ART OF LIFE

Zygmunt Bauman, The Art of Life (New York: Polity Press, 2008) (From the backcover: "In our individualized society we are all artists of life--whether we know it or not, will it or not and like it or not, by decree of society if not by our own choice. In this society we are all expected, rightly or wrongly, to give our lives purpose and form by using our own skills and resources, even it we lack the tools and materials with which artists' studios need to be equipped for artists' work to be conceived and executed. And we are praised or censured for the result--for what we have managed to failed to accomplish and for what we have achieved or lost." "In or liquid modern society we are also taught to believe that the purpose of the art of life should be and can be happiness--though it is not clear what happiness is, the images of happy state keep changing and the state of happiness repines most of the time something yet-to-be-reached." From the "Introduction": "[A]s long ago as 18 march 1968, in the heat of the presidential campaign, Robert Kennedy launched a scathing attack on the lie on which the GNP-bound measure of happiness rests: 'Our GNP takes into account in its calculations the air pollution tobacco advertising and ambulances riding to collect the wounded form our motorways. It registers the costs of the security systems which we install to protect our homes and the prisons in which we lock up those who manage to break into them. It entails the destruction of our sequoia forests and their replacement through sprawling and chaotic urbanization. It includes the production of napalm, nuclear arms and armed vehicles, used by police to stifle urban unrest. It records . . . television programs that glorify violence in order to sell toys to children. On the other hand, GNP does not note the health of our children, quality of our education or gaiety of our games. It does not measure the beauty of our poetry and the strength of our marriages. It does not care  to evaluate the quality of our political debates and integrity of our representatives. It leaves out of consideration our courage, wisdom and culture. It says nothing about our compassion and dedication to our country. In a word, the GNP measures everything, except what makes life worth the pain of living it.' Robert Kennedy was murdered a few week after publish this fiery indictment and declaring his intention to restore the importance of things that make life worth living . . . " Id. at 4. And, in the near half-century since Kennedy's "attack on the lie on which the GBP-bound measure of happiness rest," things have only gotten worse. Everyone is encouraged and expected to "brand" themselves (that is, make themselves a product). Everyones' attention span has been reduce to near zero (for example, the 140-character text message or tweet is the outer range of our reading attention span). Email, not face-to-face conversation is the preferred means of communication (for example, we feel more comfortable emailing the person in the office next door than to knock on the door and have a chat.). And the unreal reality-TV has become the benchmark upon which we measure life (here, just think about the fact that a reality-TV person is the preferred choice of tens of millions of American voters). No wonder those with even  half a clue are so unhappy.).

ITALIAN AFRICA, 1930s

Knud Holmboe, Desert Encounter: An Adventureous Journey through Italian Africa, translated from the Danish by Helga Holbek, intorduction by Tim Winter (The Quillian Press, 1931, 1936,1994) (From the "Introduction": "Italy in Libya provides one of the most extreme of all cases of colonial repression. Sadly. Europe's selective amenesia has all but obliterted one of the most efficient instances of genocide ever perpetrated. Even among academics there are few who have written on the theme; and the scarce exceptions have unearthed a story so schocking that even the mysterious absence of key archival records, removed by Italian state researchers in the 1950s, does little to mitigate the drama and the disgrace of it." Id. at 8.).

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 21 FEBRUARY 1801 - 10 AUGUST 1890

Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 1988, 2009) ("Newman wrote 'the Pillar of the Cloud', better known by its opening words, 'Lead, Kindly Light'. [] But the words which are most characteristic of Newman come at the end of the first stanza:
'I do not ask to see/ The distant scene, --one step enough for me'. It was a thought which was always to be at the heart of his spirituality, namely, that light is only given to us gradually bit by bit, but that we are always given enough to see what we have to do next, and that when we have taken that step which been lit up for us, we shall see the next, but only the next, step illuminated--while to attempt to see several steps ahead or the end of the path is not only futile but also self-defeating." Id. at 79-80.).

John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, edited by Ian Ker (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 1994).

Frank M. Turner, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2002) ("The purpose of this book . . . is  to explore the Tractarians and the career of John Henry Newman of Oriel in their challenge to evangelical Protestant religion." Id. at 23.).

A COMMENTARY ON HOW WE ACTUAL CONNECT WITH THE OUR WORLD

David Sax, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter (New York: PublicAffars, 2016).

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN ON "LIQUID FEAR" AND "DERIVATIVE FEAR"

Zygmunt Beaumont, Liquid Fear (New York: Polity Press, 2006) ("'Derivative fear' is a steady frame of mind that is best described as the sentiment of being susceptible to danger; a feeling of insecurity (the world is full of dangers that may strike at any time with little or no warning) and vulnerability (in the event of the danger striking, there will be little if any chance of escape or successful defence; the assumption of vulnerability to dangers depends more on a lack of trust in the defense available than on the volume or nature of actual threats). A person who has interiorized such a vision of the world that includes insanity and vulnerability will routinely, even in the absence of a genuine threat, resort to the responses proper to a point-blank meeting with danger; 'derivative feat' acquires a self-propelling capacity." "It has been, for instance, widely noted that the opinion that the 'world out there' is dangerous and better to be avoided is more common among people who seldom, if ever, go out in the evenings, when the dangers seem to them most terrifying; and there is no way of knowing whether such people avoid leaving their homes because of their sense of danger, or whether they are afraid of the unspoken dangers lurking in dark streets because, in the absence of practice, they have lost the confidence-giving ability to cope with the presence of threat, they are prone to let their imaginations, already afflicted by fear, run loose." Id. at 3. From the back cover: "Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural worlds. And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live again in a time of fear. Whether it's fear of natural disasters, the fear of environmental catastrophes or the fear of indiscriminate terrorist attacks, we live today in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that could strike unannounced and at any moment. 'Fear' is the name we give to our uncertainty in the face of the dangers that characterize our liquid modern age, to our ignorance of what the threat is and our incapacity to determine what can and can't be done to counter it.").

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN ON LIQUID FEAR

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life (New York: Polity Press, 2005) (From "Introduction: On Living in a Liquid Modern World": "'Liquid life' is a kind of life that tends to be lived in a liquid modern society. 'Liquid modern' is a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. Liquidity of life and that of society feed and reinvigorate each other. Liquid life, just like liquid modern society, cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long." Id. at 1. "A habitual answer given to a wrong end of behavior, to conduct unsuitable for an accepted purpose or leading to undesirable outcomes, is education or re-education: instilling in the learners new kins of motives, developing different propensities and training them in deploying new skills. The thrust of education in such cases is to challenge the impact of dilly experience, to fight back and in the end defy the pressures arising form the social setting in which the learners operate. But will the education and the educators fit the bill? Will they themselves be able to resist the pressure? Will they manage to avoid being enlisted in the service of the self-same pressures they are meant to deny? This question has been asked since ancient times, repeatedly answered in the negative by the realities of social life, yet resurrected with undiminished fore rolling every survive calamity. The hopes of using education as a mac potent enough to unsettle and ultimately dislodge the pressures of 'social facts' seems to be as immortal as they are vulnerable . . . " Id. at 12. In short, teacher, we don't need no education . . . You're just another block in the wall. From "Consumers in Liquid Modern Society": "Consumer society rests its case on the promise to satisfy human desires in a way no other society in the past could do or dream of doing. The promise of satisfaction remains seductive, however, only so long as the desire stays ungratified; more importantly, so long as there is a suspicion that the desire has not been truly and fully ratified. Setting the targets, low, assuring each access to goods that meet the targets, as well as a belief in objective limits to ;genuine' and 'realistic' desires--these would sound the death knell of consumer society, consumer industry and consumer markets. It is the non-satisfaction of desires, and a firm and petrol belief that each act to satisfy them leaves much to be desired and can be bettered, that are the flywheels of the consumer-targeted economy." Id. at 80. Thus, the iPhone 700, which came out last week and which you purchased this morning, is already a disappointment because the iPhone 7 just might be out next year. Or, that dress is so last week.).

UNWELT (OOM-VELT), OR PERCEPTIONAL SOAP BUBBLES

Alexandra Horowitz, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell (New York: Scribner, 2016).

Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (New York: Scribner, 2009) (". . . replace our anthropomorphizing instinct with a behavior-reading instinct. You need only know how to translates his answer." "Here is our first tool to getting that answer: imagining the point of view of the dog. The scientific study of animals was changed by a German biologist of the early twentieth century named Jakob von Uexkull. What he proposed was revolutionary: anyone who wants to understand the life of an animal must begin by considering what he called their umwelt (OOM-velt): their subjective or 'self-world.' Umwelt captures what life is like as the animal. . . . If we want to understand the life of any animal, we need to know what things are meaningful to it. The first way to discover this is to determine what the animal can perceive: what it can see, hear, smell, or otherwise sense. Only objects that are perceived can have meaning to the animal; the rest are not even noticed, or all look the same. The wind that whisks through the grasses? Irrelevant to the tick. The sound of a childhood birthday party. Doesn't appear on its radar. The delicious cake crumbs on the ground? Leave the tick cold." Send, how does the animal act on the world? . . . " "Thus, these two components--perception and action--largely define and circumscribe the world for every living thin, All animals have their own unweltn--their own subjective realities, what von Uexkull thought of as 'soap bubbles' with them forever caught in the middle we human are enclosed in our own soap bubbles, too. In each of out self-worlds, for instance, we are very attentive to where other people are and what they are doing or saying. . . . We see in the visual range of light, we hear audible noises, and we smell strong odors placed in front of our noses. On top of that each individual create his own personal umvelt, full of objects with special meaning to him. You can most clearly see this last fact by letting yourself be led through an unknown city by a native. He will steer you along a path obvious to this, but invisible to you. But the two of you share some things: neither of you is likely to stop and listen to the ultrasonic cry of a nearby bat; neither of you smells what the man passing you had for dinner last night (unless it involved a lot of garlic). We, the tick, and every other animal dovetail into our environment: we are bombarded with stimuli, but only a very few are meaningful to us." Id. at 21-22.).

Jon Katz, The Second Chance Dog: A Love Story (New York: Ballantine Books, 2013).

Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier, How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through Puppyhood and Beyond (New York: Three River Press, 2009).

The Monks of New Skete, The Art of Raising a Puppy, 2nd ed. (New York: Little, Brown, 2011).

The Monks of New Skete, How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend, 2nd ed. (New York: Little, Brown, 2002).

SUGGESTED FICTION

Anuk Arudpragasam, The Story of a Brief Marriage: A Novel (New York: Flatiron Books, 2016).

Nanni Balestrini, We Want Everything: A Novel, translated from the Italian by Matt Holden, introduction by Rachel Kushner (London & New York: Verso, 2016).

Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam, translated from the Vietnamese by Phan Thanh Hao, edited by Frank Palmos (New York: Riverbed Books, 1996).

Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2016).

J. M. Barrie, The Annotated Peter Pan (The Centennial Edition), edited with an Introduction and Notes by Maria Tatar (New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2011).

Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel, translated from the German by Basil Creighton with revisions by Margot Bettauer Dembo, introduction by Noah Isenberg (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2016).

Max Blecher, Adventures in Immediate Irreality, translated from the Romanian by Michael Henry Heim, preface by Andrei Godrescu, introduction by Herta Muller (New York: New Directions Paperbook, 2015).

William Boyd, Sweet Caress: A Novel (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016) (so real).

Graeme Macrae Burnet, His  Bloody Project: Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae: A Historical Thriller (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016).

Mauro Javier Cardenas, The Revolutionaries Try Again (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2016).

Caleb Carr, Surrender, New York: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2016) (" 'In the end, it didn't matter. The new citizens of New York want to believe that their police department is both strong and infallible. That's what 9/11 did to them. They don't care if the wrong people go to jail, or if rough justice is handed out to suspects out of the public view, or if people on the outskirts are still having their rights violated fairly constantly. Just so long as the town becomes something that it was never intended to be.' I glanced at him. 'And what's that?' Mike let out another sigh, this one shorter and angrier. 'Los Angles,' he soon said . . . 'That's what New York is playing by, now--L.A. rules. As long as the town is a safe playground for the rich and famous, let the cops do what they have to. Or hire private cops, which, I don't know if you've noticed, more and more neighborhood in New York are doing. I'm telling you, it's fucking perverse, New York's supposed to be the rough-and-tumble melting pot where the rules for the rest of the country are hammered out. Now . . . every place is going to become Los Angeles. a desert-town-turned-city that wouldn't even exist, if Nature had any to do with it. Fucking perverse . . .' " Id. at 274-275.).

Rafael Chirbes, On the Edge, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (New York: New Directions Books, 2016).

D. G. Compton, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, introduction by Jeff Vandermeer (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2016).

Kia Corthron, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter: A Novel (New York & Oakland: Seven Stories Press, 2016).

Osamu Dazat, No Longer Human, translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene (New York: New Directions, 1973).

Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama, translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2016).

Pietro di Donatio, Christ in Concrete, with a preface by Studs Terkel (New York; New American Library, 2004).

Alfred Doblin, Bright Magic: Stories, selected and translated from the German by Damion Searls, introduction by Gunter Grass (New York: New York Review Books Classic, 2016).

Emma Donoghue, The Wonder: A Novel (New York: Little, Brown, 2016) (See Stephen King, "A Hunger of the Soul," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 10/2/2016.).

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, translated from the Russian by David McDuff, introduction by Stephen Tumin, engravings by Harry Brockway (London;The Folio Society, 1997).

Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, translated from the Italian by William Weaver, illustrated by Neil Packer (London: The Folio Society, 2016).

Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2016).

Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims (London & New York: Hogarth, 2016).

Monika Fagerholm, Wonderful Women by the Sea: A Novel, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate (New York: The New Press, 1994, 1997).

Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, preface by Jonathan Coe, engravings by Derrick Harris (London: Folio Society, 1959, 2008).

George Grossmith & Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody, illustrated by Weedon Grossmith (London: Folio Society, 2016).

Peter Handke, The Moravian Night: A Story, translated from the German by Krishna Winston (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016).

Peter Handke, Short Letter, Long Farewell, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim, introduction by Greil Marcus (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2009).

Peter Handke, Slow Homecoming, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim, introduction by Benjamin Kunkel (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2009).

Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine: A Novel, translated from the Dutch by David McKay (New York: Pantheon Books, 2016).

Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea, translated from the French with notes by James Hogarth, introduction by Graham Robb, foreword by Andrew Graham-Dixon (London: The Folio Society, 2014).

Han Kang, The Vegetarian: A Novel, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith (London & New York: Hogarth, 2015).

Stephen King, The Shining, illustrated by Edward Kinsella (London: The Folio Society, 2016).

Karl Ove Knausgaard, MyStruggle: Book Five, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2016).

Laszlo Krasznahorkai, The Last Wolf, translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes; (New York: New Directions Books, 2009); & Herman: The Game Warden, the Death of Craft, translated from the Hungarian by John Batki (New York: New Directions Books, 1986, 2016) (From Herman: The Game Warden: "This upwelling elemental compassion was filled with remorse but at the same time also with a frightening stubbornness, that obduracy of the misled which follows in the wake of a wrong committed in ignorance." Id. at 19.).

Jonathan Lethem, A Gambler's Anatomy: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2016) (See Kurt Andersen,"Rolls Of the Dice,"NYT Book Review, Sunday, 10/16/2016).

Ernst Lothar, The Vienna Melody, translated from the German by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Europa Editions, 2015) ("'Miracle' and 'to marvel' mean the same. The world which no longer believes in supernatural miracles because it strives to make them natural by the machine; the petrified world of cities, which with every airplane usurps God's handiwork, in return for which God's revenge on them is the aeroplane--that world no longer marvels. It believes in superman, but not in the force superior to man. A phenomenon like Hitler is the logical consequence of it, for he asks of man's inability to marvel the unbelievable, thereby making it possible to achieve it. 'It is because the rootless, self-seeking spirit of the city predominates much more deeply over that of the soil in America than in Europe that the danger from the machine is increased a thousandfold. What distinguishes a village from New York is not its size but its spirit. The spirit of the city is the intellect, even the sterile intellect. The spirit of the village is the soul, it is cosmic, hence ever fertile. The country of America, and this to me is the most beautiful and moving part about it, has by nature the spirit of the village, although everything you read or hear about it would lead you to expect the opposite. But the spirit of the city is dictatorship, whereas the spirit of the village is freedom 'A village is free even if Hitler and Mussolini dominate it; but the American city is eternally unfree, for its dictators are the machine and money.'" Id. at 513-514.).

Mairtin O Cadhain, The Dirty Dust (Cre na Cille)(A Margellos World Republic of Letters Book), translated from the Irish by Alan Titley (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2015).

Mairtin O Cadhain, Graveyard Clay (Cre na Cille)(A Margellos World Republic of Letters Book), translated from the Irish by Liam Con Iomaire & Tim Robinson (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2016).

Amos Oz, Judas: A Novel, translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Large (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).

Suzan-Lori Parks, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 and 3) (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2015).

Suzan-Lori Parks, Venus (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1997).

Victor Pelevin, The Helmet of Horror (The Myth of Theseus and the Minotar), translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield (New York: Canongate, 2006).

Francine Prose, Mister Monkey: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2016) See Cathleen Schine, "Monkey In the Business," New York Times Book Review, Sunday, 10/23/2016.).

Annie Proulx, Barkskins: A Novel (New York: Scribner, 2016) ("The chief accountant inclined his head a little and said, 'Mrs. Breitsprecher, may I recommend you to read Adam Smith? It is a truism that men do only what they are rewarded for doing. Flense received a rather modest salary for his legal work on behalf of the company. And in future keep in mind when doing business with Chicago lawyers--homo hominy lupus est--man is a wolf to man.'" Id. at 630.).

Jonathan Rabb, Among the Living: A Novel (New York: Other Press, 2016).

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason (Road to Freedom I), translated from the French by Eric Sutton (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 1992).

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Last Chance (Roads of Freedom IV), translated from the French by Craig Vasey (London & New York: Continuum, 2009).

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Reprieve (Road to Freedom II), translated from the French by Eric Sutton (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 1992).

Jean-Paul Sartre, Troubled Sleep (Road to Freedom III), translated from the French by Gerald Hopkins (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 1992).

Steve Sem-Sandberg, The Chosen Ones: A Novel, translated from the Swedish by Anna Paterson (New York: farer, Straus & Giroux, 2016) (From the book jacket: "The Am Spiegelgrund Clinic, in the glittering Vienna, masqueraded as a well-intentioned reform school for wayward boys and girls and a home for chronically ill children. The reality, however, was very different: in the wake of Germany's annexation of Austria on the eve of World War II, the clinic's doctors, nurses, and teachers created a monstrous parody of the institution's benign-sounding brief. The Nazi regime's euthanasia program would come to determine the fate of many of the clinic's inhabitants." Also see Susan Rubin Suleiman, "Selected for Death," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 10/23.2016.).

Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice: A Novel (New York: Viking, 2015).

Lionel Shriver, The Mandibles: A Family, 2019-2047 (New York: Harper, 2016) ("'It's magnificent!' Kurt exclaimed. He was the kind of guy who would resist class distinctions on ideological grounds, yet instinctively think more highly of their family for bearing talismans of noble birth. Avery didn't entirely buy into the notion of American aristocracy herself, whereas her sister aggressively rejected elitism as offensive. But Esteban had been right, back when the Steakhouses first moved in: All the Mandibles felt special, if only, in Florence's case, special for refusing to feel special. Like the larger tussle over American 'exeptionalism,' the family's tensions over are-we-special could now be put to rest. All the sumptuous fine craftsmanship in Bountiful House in Mount Vernon--the carved oak paneling, the curling banisters, the storied oriental carpets, the grand piano, the bone china for fifty--was officially reduced to an incomplete set of silverware and a sofa bandaged with duct tape. That should have been a little saddening, even to Karl Marx." Id. at 264.).

Sasha Sokolov,  School for Fools, translated from the Russian by Alexander Boguslawski (New York: New York Review Classics, 2015).

W. Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (Oxford: Benediction Classics, 2007) ("But the most lasting agony of this war was suffered, not by the defeated, but by the victors. For when their passion had cooled the Americans could not easily disguise from themselves that they had  committed murder. They were not at heart a brutal folk, but rather a kindly. They liked to think of the world as a place of innocent pleasure-seeking, and of themselves as the main purveyors of delight. Yet they had been somehow drawn into this fantastic crime; and henceforth an all-pervading sense of collective guilt warped the American mind. They had ever been vainglorious and intolerant; but now these qualities in them became extravagant even to insanity. Both as individuals and collectively, they became increasingly frightened of criticism, increasingly prone to blame and hate, increasingly self-righteous, increasingly hostile to the critical intelligence, increasingly superstitious." "Thus was this once noble people singled out by the gods to be cursed, and the minister of curses." Id. at 42-43.).

W. Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (Oxford: Oxford Reprints, 2010).

Erik Axl Sound (aka Jerker Erilson & Hakan Axlander Sundquist), The Crow Girl: A Novel, translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith (New York: Knopf, 2016).

Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday: A Romance (New York: Knopf, 2016).

David Szalay, All That Man Is (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2016).

Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2016) (See Jiayang Fan, "When Music Was Life and Death," NYT Book Review, Sunday 11/6/2016.).

Gonzalo Torne, Divorce Is in the Air: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (New York: Knopf, 2016).

Anne Tyler, Vinegar Girl: The Taming of the Shrew Retold (London & New York: Hogarth Shakespeare, 2016).

Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Lovers On All Saints' Day: Stories, translated from the Spanish by Anne Maclean (New York: Riverhead Books, 2015).

Marina Warner, Indigo or, Mapping the Waters (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992) ("I am such a fucking racist, she was thinking, as the actor wagged a hand to his fellow actors and headed for the door. I can't get away from it, even though I of all people shouldn't be. Self-hating, denying my links. But it felt like a fraud when I used to pretend to pass for black in those days. It wasn't any kind of answer, Xanthe was right, really." Id. at 389.).

Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things (London: Allen & Unwin, 2015) (From the book jacket: "The Natural Way of Things is a confronting and starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control. It is an unforgettable story . . . , told by a provocative and fearless truth-teller as she unflinchingly reveals us and our world to ourselves.").

WILL WE GET THROUGH THE TRUMP YEARS WITHOUT A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS?

Michael J. Klarman, The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (New York: Oxford U. Press, 2016) ("[T]his book advances a view of the Founding that differs somewhat from those previously offered. Plainly, no single motive or explanatory variable can account for the making of the Constitution. However, experts will recognize that I have been especially drawn to the view, long advanced by others, that the Constitution was a conservative counterrevolution against what leading American statesmen regarded as the irresponsible economic measures enacted by a majority of state legislatures in the mid-1780s, which they diagnosed as a symptom of excessive democracy." Id. at x. From the book jacket: "Most Americans revere their Constitution yet know relatively little about its origins.").

"THE CONTINGENT NATURE OF HISTORY AND MEMORY"

Victoria E. Bynum, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 2001, 2016) (From the back cover: "Victoria Bynum traces the origins and legacy of the Jones Country uprising from the American Revolution to the modern civil rights movement. In bridging the gap between the legendary and the real Free State of Jones, she shows how the legend--what was told, what was embellished, and what was left out--reveals a great deal about the South's transition from slavery to segregation; the racial, gender, and class politics of the period; and the contingent nature of history and memory.").

Thomas Jefferson Knight & Ethel Knight, Free State of Jones and The Echo of the Black Horn: Two Sides of the Life and Activities of Captain Newt Knight, foreword by Jim Kelly (New York: Racehorse Publishing, 2016) (What kind of mentality does a person have to possess to embrace and articulate and rationalize the following vision, narrative? Is it mental illness (in the form, here, of white supremacy and racial segregation) or simply intellectual dishonesty? From Ethel Knight's The Echo of the Black Horn (1951): "Most of the slaves were deeply religious and attended every religious service. These loved their white folks and were in turn loved by them, as members of families, even an affection similar to blood relationship was not uncommon between master and slave." "The negroes expressed their joy and contentment by singing and shouting. Dancing was a favorite pastime in the quarters, and there was seldom one who worried, for in return for his labor, the master stood between him and responsibility. He had no cause for worry because his food was the same as that served to the master; he was clothed with the good coarse cloth of the loom, which the white mistress had taught the women to make, and there was warmth and comfort in the cabins where the slave were taught to follow their elders introspect and obedience." "But sometimes even the best master would be forced to sell off a slave for an objectionable reason. Some slaves were undesirable and refused to submit to discipline, and others were not trustworthy. These made up the largest group to be sold along with the numbers of good slaves 'sold down south' for profit. Many of the objectionable reasons were never mentioned, such as rape, and in many instances where a slave woman became a mistress of a white man, which was the only way of breaking off the liaison: sell the woman off and send her out of the country!" "Such a practice was horrible, since these unfortunate people were victims of circumstances, treated without any consideration whatsoever." Id. at 112. And now we have Alt-Right movement.).

Sally Jenkins & John Stauffer, The State of Jones: The Small Southern County that Seceded form the Confederacy (New York: Anchor Books, 2009).

SAINT AURELIUS AUGUSTINE

Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans, Books 1-3 (Loeb Classical Library, 411), with an English translation by George E. McCracken (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1957).

Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans, Books 4-7 (Loeb Classical Library, 412), with an English translation by William M. Green (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1963).

Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans, Books 8-11 (Loeb Classical Library, 413), with an English translation by David S. Wiesen (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1968).

Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans, Books 12-15 (Loeb Classical Library, 414), with an English translation by Philip Levine (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1966).

Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans, Books 16-18.35 (Loeb Classical Library, 415), with an English translation by Eva Matthews Sanford & William McAllen Green (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1965).

Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans, Books 18.36-20 (Loeb Classical Library, 416), with an English translation by William Chase Greene (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1960).

Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans, Books 21-22; General Index (Loeb Classical Library, 417), with an English translation by William M. Green (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1972).

Augustine, Confessions, Books 1-8 (Loeb Classical Library, 26), with an English translation by William Watts (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1912).

Augustine, Confessions, Books 9-13 (Loeb Classical Library, 27), with an English translation by William Watts (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1912).

Augustine, Confessions, Books 1-8 (Loeb Classical Library, 26), edited with an English translation by Carolyn J. B. Hammond (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 2014).

Augustine, Confessions, Books 9-13 (Loeb Classical Library, 27), edited with an English translation by Carolyn J. B. Hammond (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 2016).

Augustine, Selected Letters (Loeb Classical Library, 239), with an English translation by James Houston Baxter (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: England: Harvard U. Press, 1953).

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography: New edition with an Epilogue (Berkeley & Los Angeles: U. of California Press, 1967, 2000).

Robin Lane Fox, Augustine: Conversions in Confessions (New York:Basic Books, 2015).

THE ARAB OF THE FUTURE

Sarah Boxer, "Growing Up Arab," New York Review of Books, October 27, 2016) (a review of Raid Sattouf's two graphic memoirs, see below).

Riad Sattouf, The Arab of the Future: Growing Up in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir, translated from the French by Sam Taylor (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015).

Riad Sattouf, The Arab of the Future: Growing Up in the Middle East, 1984-1985: A Graphic Memoir, translated from the French by Sam Taylor (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2016).

GLOBAL JIHADISM, GLOBAL SALAFISM, GLOBAL JIHADI-SALAFISM: WHAT DO THESE MEAN?

Brian H. Fishman, The Master Plan: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2016) ("For many in the West, the Islamic State's emergence as a global force was a surprise. It seemed to come from nowhere in the cauldron of the Syrian civil war and immediately transform into a global threat." "But the Islamic State did not emerge form nowhere. The Islamic State's leaders celebrated the institution's tenth anniversary in June 2016, identifying its founding in October 2006. And even prior to that, a senior al-Qaeda leader living under a permissive form of house arrest in Iran framed a seven-stage master plan that began with the 9/11 attacks and called for the declaration of a caliphate in Syria between 2013 and 2016. If not a blueprint for events to come, the proposal has proved a startling prescient prediction for future events." Id. at ix-x. I guess President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton did not found ISIS after all. You knew that, did you not? From the book cover: "Drawing on troves of recently declassified documents captured from the Islamic State and its predecessors, counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman tells the story of this organization's complex and largely hidden past--and what the master plan suggests about its future. Only by understanding the Islamic State's full history--and the strategy that drove it--can we understand the contradictions that may ultimately tear it apart.").

Hugh Kennedy, Caliphate: The History of an Idea (New York: Basic Books, 2016) (From the "Introduction": "This book is quietly polemical. The message which runs through it is that the idea of caliphate is a rich and varied tradition. Many Muslims have embraced the argument that such an institution is the best way of ordering human society, but caliphate is a many-splendored thing. There is no one way, no single template or legal framework which defines caliphate. History tells us that there have been caliphs of many different sorts, warrior caliphs, pious caliphs, intellectual caliphs, pleasure-loving caliphs, incompetent caliphs, cruel and tyrannical caliphs. They are all part of the caliphal tradition. There has never been one generally agreed view of what powers the office should have, who is qualified to be caliph and how caliphs should be chosen. Perhaps it is this flexibility, even uncertainty, which has enabled the idea to survive so long and have traction in so many different Muslim societies." Id. at xvi-xvii.).

Shiraz Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2016).

Roel Meijer, ed., Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2013) (From the book jacket: "'Salafism' and 'jrhadi-Salafism' have become significant doctrinal trends in contemporary Islamic thought, yet the West largely fails to offer a sophisticated and discerning definition of these movements." "The contributors to Global Salafism carefully outline both the differences among Salafist schools and the broader currents of Islamic thought constituting this trend. Essays examine the regional manifestations of the phenomenon and its shared, essential doctrines. Their analysis highlight Salafism' inherent ambivalence and complexities, or the 'out-antiquing the antique' that has brought Islamic thought into the modern age while simultaneously maintaining its relationship with an older, purer authenticity. Emphasizing the subtle tensions between local and global aspirations within the 'Salafist method,' Global Salafism investigates the movement like no other study currently available.").

Graeme Wood, The Way of the Stranger: Encounters with the Islamic State (New York: Random House, 2017) ("Some will continue to see the Islamic State;s supporters as maniacs and doubt the value of analyzing the madness, let alone the sickening propaganda, in any detail. What is the benefit in reading the rantings of crazy people, even it they quote the Koran correctly? I am reminded of a story the late film critic Roger Ebert told about his days as a cub reporter, when he interviewed a carnival barker. 'His star was a geek, who bit off the heads of live chickens and drank their blood. "He's the best geek in the business," this man assured me. "What is the difference between a good geek and a bad geek?" I asked. "You wanna examine the chickens?"' "Much of this book consists of examine the chickens. It is not pretty, but it is more rewarding than the Islamic State's detractors might think. For years now, the Islamic State and its supporters have been producing essays, fatwas (religious rulings), films, and tweets at an industrial pace. In studying them we see a coherent view of the world rooted in a minority interpretation of Islamic scripture that has existed, in various forms, for almost as long as the religion itself. This version of Islam bears only passing resemblance to the Islam practiced or espoused by most Muslims. Mainstream Muslims resent that the Islamic State claims exclusive access to the truth about their religion, and in solidarity with their revulsion, many non-Muslims have averted their eyes and willfully ignored the particulars of the Islamic State's religious claims. This studied ignorance has been a costly mistake. Our enemy has invited us to know more about it, and we have been so repulsed that we have declined the offer." Id at xvii-xviii. Food for thought: Our ignorance is not serving us well. We having forgotten the simply, but core, admonishment: 'Know thy enemy.' The following lines tickles this reader's heart to the core: "A volley of inbound mortars could last seconds or an hour, and I sometimes heard helicopters buzzing off toward the authors of the attack and, with a rip of machine-gun fire, killing them. By the third attack, I had begun prepping the bunker with a book and a flashlight, so I'd never get caught dead or alive without reading material." Id. at xviii.).

HERBERT APTHEKER

Herbert Aptheker, Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion: Including the 1831 "Confessions," preface by Bettina Aptheker (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996, 2006) (From the back cover: "In the summer of 1831, a band of some forty slaves led by Nat Turner attacked slave-owning residents of Southampton County, Virginia. One of the largest and most violent revolts in the history of the young nation, the rebellion took the lives of some sixty white men, women, and children. An outcry against the South's exploitative slave system, the revolt was suppressed within forty-eight hours, and Turner, who eluded authorities for months, was eventually captured, sentenced to death, and executed." "The impact of Turner's uprising was monumental. Abolitionists looked for ways to encourage and support future insurrections while white Southerners took revenge on both slave and free African-Americans. Nearly 200 blacks, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were beaten, tortured, and murdered by white mobs." "Herbert Aptheker's account of the bloodiest slave uprising in U.S. history was the first full-length study of its kind. Meticulously researched, it explores the nature of Southern society in the early nineteenth century and the conditions that led to the rebellion. Described by the Journal of American History as 'a thorough and scholarly treatment,' the text includes Turner's Confessions,' recorded before his execution in 1831." QUERY: Does one person have any right to enslave another person? Is a government legitimate if it recognizes a right of one person to enslave another? If the answer to those two questions is no, then does not the enslaved have a right to get themselves free? And if so, what are the limits on what action the enslaved might take to that end (again, given that the government is complicit in the enslavement)? Is violence off limits? And, if the enslaved have a right to get themselves free and violence is not off limit, is it a further injustice to convict and punish (including execute) those enslaved who sought their freedom? Or, to put it another way: Were YOU the legal representative of Nat Turner, how would you plead his case (even knowing, beyond a doubt, that Nat Turner's conviction and death were forgone conclusion before the trial even begins)? Food for thought.).

Herbert Aptheker, Herbert Apther On Race and Democracy: A Reader, edited by Eric Foner & Manning Marable (Urbana & Chicago: U. of Illinois Press, 2006).

Gary Murrell, "The Most Dangerous Communist in the United States: A Biography of Herbert Aptheker, afterword by Bettina Aptheker (Amherst & Boston: U. of Massachusetts Press, 2015).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

• 7:15

  Why Trump lost: Judge slams alternative facts

  Seth Mythrax

  • 100,260 views
  • 1 day ago

AGAIN, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT REMAINS RELEVANT

Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, translated from the German by Fritz . A. Koelln & James P. Pettegrove; with a new forward by Peter Gay (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2009) (From Peter Gay's "Foreword": "When in October 1932, Ernst Cassirer, then a professor of philosophy at the University of Hamburg, sat down to write a preface for his new monograph, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, the Weimar Republic had only three more months to live. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was invited to form a government, and promptly put an inglorious end to the political system that had governed postwar Germany, at times happily, often less so. In those days no one, not even Cassirer, saw the tragedy as still another signal defeat for the thought of the Enlightenment. But with its contempt for reason, its celebration of prejudice, and its cultivation of hero worship, the new Nazi regime was nothing less than that--a triumph for the forces of superstition, bigotry, and pitiless violence. However relevant the thought of the eighteenth century to the political battles of the twentieth, Cassirer was too scrupulous a scholar to point it out. But today, some seventy-five years after he had completed this masterly anatomy of Enlightenment thought, the parallels between the present day and the part of the past that was then his subject, seem almost obvious." Id. at vii. And now America must live in, and cope with, the Donal Trump legacy.).

SUGGESTED READINGS ON CIVILITY AND TOLERANCE

Teresa M. Bejan, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2017).

John R. Bowlin, Tolerance Among the Virtues (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2016).

Keith J. Bybee, How Civility Works (Stanford, CA: Stanford Briefs/Sanford U. Press, 2016).

THE POOR AND THE WRETCHED FIGHT THE RICH MAN'S WAR

D. Peter MacLeod, Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution  (New York: Knopf, 2016) (The poor and marginal members of society are the ones whose bodies are put at risk to fight the rich man's and elite man's war. "Most of Wolfe's soldiers had been recruited from among the marginal populations of Britain and British America. Individuals who found themselves deprived of any other way to earn a wage or living lives so relentlessly grim that any alternative seemed preferable frequently sought refuge in an army that provided a desperate chance for subsistence, escape, and adventure." "James Wolfe referred to the first of these motives in 1756 when, ordered to Gloucestershire to deal with unrest among local weavers, he noted, 'I hope it will turn out a good recruiting party, for the people are so oppressed, so poor and so wretched, that they will perhaps hazard a knock on the pate [head] for bread and clothes, and turn soldiers through sheer necessity.'" "The soldiers of the Seventy-Eighth were a special case. Recruited by Lieutenant Colonel Simon Fraser, master of Lovat and chief of Clan Fraser, they came for the most part from Scottish clans that had repelled against the Crown in 1745." "In joining this battalion, Highlanders were serving not so much the Crown as their colonel's ambitions. A prominent rebel, Lovat's father had been executed for his role in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46. Lovat, who played an equivocal role during the uprising, had raised the regiment in hopes of buying his way back into the good graces of the British government with the lives of his fellow Scots. Wounded earlier in the summer, he remained in camp convalescing while his regiment went into battle without him." Id. at 180-181. And so it goes!).

THE HISTORY OF L'ETRANGER

Alice Kaplan, Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2016).