Wednesday, January 31, 2018
FERNANDO PESSOA
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, edited and translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2003) ("All I asked of life is that it ask nothing of me. At the door of the cottage I never had, I sat in the sunlight that never fell there, and I enjoyed the future old age of my tired reality (glad that I hadn't arrived there yet). To still not have died is enough for life's wretches, and to still have hope. . . . ." ". . . . . satisfied with dreams only when I'm not dreaming, satisfied with the world only when I'm dreaming far away from it. A swinging pendulum, back and forth, forever moving to arrive nowhere, eternally captive to the twin fatality of a centre and a useless motion." Id. at 120-121.).
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, edited by Jeronimo Pizarro, and translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (New York: New Directions, 2017).
Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, edited and translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2006) ("Don't try to build in the space you suppose / Is future, Lydia, and don't promise yourself / Tomorrow. Quit hoping and be who you are / Today. You alone are your life. / Don't plot your destiny, for you are not future. / Between the cup you empty and the same cup / Refilled, who knows whether your fortune / Won't interpose the abyss?" [1923] Id. at 114.).
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, edited by Jeronimo Pizarro, and translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (New York: New Directions, 2017).
Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, edited and translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2006) ("Don't try to build in the space you suppose / Is future, Lydia, and don't promise yourself / Tomorrow. Quit hoping and be who you are / Today. You alone are your life. / Don't plot your destiny, for you are not future. / Between the cup you empty and the same cup / Refilled, who knows whether your fortune / Won't interpose the abyss?" [1923] Id. at 114.).
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
ORIANA FALLACI
Cristina de Stefano, Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend, translated from the Italian by Marina Harss (New York: Other Press, 2017):
It seems like another lifetime when she was accused of being a Communist in the United States. Back them she had affirmed in an interview, 'I am what is called person of the Left. I don't know what these words mean today--right, left, all shit--but I care a lot about freedom.' In reality she defends her own ideas and most of all her freedom to express them. She has always believed that impending speech is a Fascist act. 'Fascism isn't an ideology, it's a behavior,' she says.Id. at 260.
Monday, January 29, 2018
ANTI-LITERATURISTS WAR ON LITERATURE
William Marx, The Hatred of Literature, translated from the French by Nicholas Elliott (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2018).
From the book jacket:
From the book jacket:
For the last 2,500 years literature has been attacked, booed, and condemned, often for the wrong reasons and occasionally for very good ones. The Hatred of Literature examines the evolving idea of literature as seen through the eyes of its adversaries: philosophers, theologians, scientists, pedagogues, and even leaders of modern liberal democracies. From Plato to C. P. Snow to Nicolas Sarkozy, literature's haters have questioned the value of literature--its truthfulness, virtue, and usefulness--and have attempted to demonstrate its harmfulness.From the text: "As I have earlier had occasion to note, anti-literature has always been highly compatible with homophobia, all the way through the twentieth century." Id. at 146.
Literature does not start with Homer or Gilgamesh, William Marx says, but with Plato driving the poets out of the city, like God casting Adam and Eve out of Paradise. That is its genesis. From Plato the poets learned for the first time that they served not truth but merely the Muses. It is no mere coincidence that the love of wisdom (philosophia) coincided with the hatred of poetry. Literature was born of scandal, and scandal has defined it ever since.
In the long rhetorical war against literature, Marx identifies four indictments--in the name of authority, truth, morality, and society. This typology allows him to move in an associative way through the centuries. In describing the misplaced ambitions corruptible powers, and abysmal failures of literature, anti-literature discourses make explicit what a given society came to expect from literature. In this way, anti-literature paradoxically asserts the validity of what it wishes to deny. The only threat to literature's continued existence, Marx writes, is not hatred but indifference.
INSPECTOR MAIGRET #4
Georges Simenon, The Carter of La Providence (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by David Coward (New York: Penguin Books, 2014) ("'Such charming creatures! Their first impulses are generous, if theatrical. They are so full of good intentions 'It's just that life, with its betrayals, compromises and overriding demands, is stronger.'" Id. at 146-147.).
Sunday, January 28, 2018
THINKING ABOUT MELVILLE AND MOBY-DICK
Jean Giono, Melville: A Novel, translated from the French by Paul Eprile, with an introduction by Edmund White (New York: New York Review Books/Classics, 2017) (From the back cover: "Eighty years after it appeared in English, Moby-Dick was translated into French for the first time by the Provencal novelist Jean Giono and his friend Lucien Jacques. The publisher persuaded Giono to write a preface granting him usual latitude. The result was this literary essai, Melville: A Novel--part biography, part philosophical rumination, part romance, part unfettered fantasy. Paul Eprile's expressive translation of this intimate homage brings the exchange full circle.).
Saturday, January 27, 2018
INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 2018
Michael Dregni, Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend (New York: Oxford U. Press, 2004) ("On November 5, 1942, SS leader Heinrich Himmler's proposition to exterminate Romanies, Jews, and others won Hitler's approval, and the Nazis began sending German Gypsies to their death in the new camp at Auschwitz. An estimated 20,000 French Gypsies soon followed them to German and Polish death camps, where 18,000 of them were terminated." Id. at 168-169.).
Peter Matthiessen, In Paradise (Farmington Hills, MI: Thorndike Press, 2014) (From the back cover: "In the late autumn of 1996, more than a hundred people gather at the site of a former death camp. For a week, they offer prayer and witness at the crematoria and meditate in all weathers on the the selection platform. They eat and sleep in the quarters of the men who sent over a million Jews to their deaths. They are joined by an American academic of Polish descent, there to complete research on the suicide of a survivor. As the days pass, tensions surface among the participants, stripping away any easy pretense to resolution or healing.").
Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC - 1492 AD (New York: Ecco, 2014).
Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews, Volume Two: Belonging 1492-1900 (New York: Ecco, 2017).
Giuliana Tedeschi, There Is a Place on Earth: A Woman in Birkenau, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).
Peter Matthiessen, In Paradise (Farmington Hills, MI: Thorndike Press, 2014) (From the back cover: "In the late autumn of 1996, more than a hundred people gather at the site of a former death camp. For a week, they offer prayer and witness at the crematoria and meditate in all weathers on the the selection platform. They eat and sleep in the quarters of the men who sent over a million Jews to their deaths. They are joined by an American academic of Polish descent, there to complete research on the suicide of a survivor. As the days pass, tensions surface among the participants, stripping away any easy pretense to resolution or healing.").
Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC - 1492 AD (New York: Ecco, 2014).
Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews, Volume Two: Belonging 1492-1900 (New York: Ecco, 2017).
Giuliana Tedeschi, There Is a Place on Earth: A Woman in Birkenau, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).
Friday, January 26, 2018
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 1767-1848
William J. Cooper, The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Liveright, 2017).
Thursday, January 25, 2018
JOSEPH CONRAD'S WORLD ANTICIPATES THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Maya Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World (New York; Penguin Press, 2017).
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
CZESLAW MILOSZ
Andrzej Franaszek, Milosz: A Biography, edited and translated from the Polish by Aleksandra & Michael Parker (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2017).
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
CAPITALISM AND THE POWERLESSNESS OF PEOPLE FULLY SUBJECT TO MARKETS
John Tutino, The Mexican Heartland: How Communities Shaped Capitalism, A Nation, and World History, 1500-2000 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2017):
Now, the end of ecological autonomies in a mechanizing. urbanization, globalizing world had ended the capacity of communities to sustain themselves. In a telling example of Mexico's transformation, at Tehuacan--east of the heartland, where archaeological studies have traced the most ancient origins of maize--rural families have all but abandoned the cultivation of the historical staple. A few among the elderly raise maize for elotes--the Mexican variant of corn on the cob, a delicacy. Their children see no future in the historic staple. They look for labor locally, in Mexico City, or the United States. They know that the world of their ancestors will not return. With little hope for gain from political participation, people seek solutions in personal and family adaptations. They can carry on in rural towns, build city barrios, or migrate to seek new opportunities. They petition and demonstrate. But they cannot press the powerful with enduring insurgencies. People fully subject to markets can defy power only as long as income and store supplies last. Whatever their grievances, whatever the political openings, the people of our urbanizing world cannot press insurgencies long enough to rattle power and claim gains.Id. at 408-409. FOOD FOR THOUGHT!!
Monday, January 22, 2018
INSPECTOR MAIGRET #3
Georges Simenon, The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by Linda Coverdale (New York: Penguin Books, 2014) ("The poor are used to stifling any expression of their despair, because they must get on with life, with work, with the demands made of them day after day, hour after hour." Id. at 27.).
Sunday, January 21, 2018
EAST ASIA (CHINA, MAINLY)
Wikipedia defines East Asia as follows: "East Asia is the eastern subregion of the Asian continent, which can be defined in either geographical or ethno-cultural terms. Geographically and geopolitically, it includes China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Mongolia, Korea (North and South), Japan and Taiwan; it covers about 12,000,000 km2 (4,600,000 sq mi), or about 28% of the Asian continent."
Michael R. Auslin, The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World's Most Dynamic Region (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2017) (This is important background reading for those who appreciate that we all live in a highly interconnected, global community. The book might be better subtitled, "War, Stagnation, and the Risks to--and from--the World's Most Dynamic Region.").
Philip Ball, The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2016, 2017) ("Water . . . is one of the most powerful vehicles for Chinese thought. At the same time, and for the same reasons, it has been one of the key determinants of Chinese civilization. It has governed the fates of emperors, shaped the contours of Chinese philosophy, and left its mark, quite literally, throughout the Chinese language. It is with water that heaven communicates its judgements to earth. Water pronounces on the right to govern. For these reasons, there is no better medium for conveying to the barbarians beyond the Wall what is special, astonishing, beautiful, and at time terrifying and maddening, about the land its inhabitants call Zhongguo, the 'Middle Kingdom'--which is in the end the Water Kingdom, too." Id. at 3-4. "What's more, the mammoth constructions and schemes of a hydraulic state are inclined to demand suppression of any disrupting influence. No institutions or organizations can be allowed to grow strong enough to rival the governmental body politics; no checks to power can be tolerated. When the infrastructure of the state is so dependent on government support and control, property rights are weak at best--which meant that a mercantile class like that which eventually came to challenge (and in some cases to replace) the monarchies and aristocracies of Europe could never arise in imperial China. Merchants certainly existed, and they could get rich--but they did so by adapting to a situation in which power was acquired through the state machinery of the civil service. There were . . . power struggles in the Chinese empires, but they did not have the same anatomy as those that evolved in the West. We can see the legacy of this tradition today, whether in the piratical attitude that, with eh state's tacit approval, has long existed to intellectual and material copyright, or in the ruthless expulsion of people from their homes and lands, without right of appeal, in the name of progress. Id. at 201-202.).
Robert Bickers, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2017) (From the book jacket: "Nationalism matters in China, and what matters in China matters to everyone. China's new nationalism . . . is rooted not in its present power but in shameful memories of its former weaknesses. Invaded, humiliated, and looted in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by foreign powers, China looks out at the twenty-first century through the lens of the past. History natters deeply to Beijing's current rulers, and Out of China explains why.").
Frank Dikotter, The Age of Openness: China Before Mao (Berkeley & Los Angles: U. of California Press, 2008) (From the back cover: "The era between empire and communism is routinely portrayed as a catastrophic interlude in China's modern history. But . . . Frank Dikotter instead shows that the first half of the twentieth century was characterized by unprecedented openness. He argue that from 1900 to 1949, all levels of Chinese society were seeking engagement with the rest of he world and that pursuit of openness was particularly evident in four areas: governance, including advances liberties and the rule of law; greater freedom of movement within the country and outside it; the spirited exchange of ideas in the humanities and sciences; and thriving and open markets and the resulting sustained growth in China's economy. [] China was at its most diverse on the eve of World War II.")
Frank Dikotter, The Cultural Revolution: A People's History 1962-1976 (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016) (From the book jacket: "After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958-1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalist elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people.").
Frank Dikotter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, 2d. ed. (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2015) (From the book jacket: "First published in 1992, The Discourse of Rave in Modern China rapidly became a classic, showing for the first time on the basis of detailed evidence how and why racial categorization became so widespread in China. After the country's devastating defeat against Japan in 1895, leading reformers like Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei turned away from the Confucian classics to seek enlightenment abroad, hoping to find the keys to wealth and power on the distant shores of Europe. Instead, they discovered the notion of 'race,' and used new evolutionary theories from Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer to present a universes red in tooth and claw in which 'yellows' competed with 'whites' in a deadly struggle for survival. After the fall of the empire in 1911, prominent politicians and writers in republican China continued to measure, classify and rank people from around the world according to their supposed biological features, all in the name of science. Racial thinking remains popular in the People's Republic of China, as serologists, geneticists and anthropometrists continue to interpret human variation in terms of 'race.' This new edition has been revised and expanded to include a new chapter taking the reader up to the twenty-first century.").
Frank Dikotter, Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe,1958-1962 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010) ("What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier transforms our understanding of the Great Leap Forward. When it comes to the overall death toll, for instance, researchers so far have had to extrapolate from official population statistics, including the census figures of 1953, 1964 and 1982. Their estimates range from 15 to 32 million excess deaths. But the public security reports complied at the time, as well as the voluminous secret reports collated by party committees in the last months of the Great Leap Forward, show how inadequate these calculations are, pointing instead at a catastrophe of a much greater magnitude: this book shows that at least 45 million people died unnecessarily between 1958 and 1962." Id. at xii.).
Frank Dikotter, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013) ("[T]the first decade of Maoism was one of the worst tyrannies in the history of the twentieth century, sending to an early grave at least 5 million civilians and bringing misery to countless more." Id. at xiii. "But by all accounts the most dreaded aspect of incarceration was not the frequent beatings, the hard about or even the grinding hunger. It was the thought reform, referred to by one victim as a 'carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind.' As Robert Ford, an English radio operator, put it after a four-year spell in prison, 'When you're being beaten up, you can turn into yourself and find a corner of your mind in which to fight the pain. But when you're being spiritual tortured by thought reform, there's nowhere you can go. It affects you at the most profound, deepest levels and attacks your very identity.' The self-criticism and indoctrination meetings lasted for hours on end, day in, day out, year after year. And unlike those on the outside, once the group discussions were over, the others were still in the same cell. They were encouraged to examine, question and denounce each other. Sometimes they had to take part in brutal struggle meetings, proving on whose side they stood by beating a suspect. 'By the time you got through such a meeting you would, if you were a conscientious person at all, suffer terribly mentally and groan for days. Silence and distress were the outcome.' Every bit of human dignity was stripped away as victims tried to survive by killing their former selves. Wang Tsunming, a nationalist officer captured in 1949, came to the conclusion that thought reform was nothing less than the 'physical and mental liquidation of oneself by oneself.' Those who resisted the process committed suicide. This who survived it renounced being themselves." Id. at 248.).
Frank Dikotter, Lars Laamann, & Zhou Xun, Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2004) (From the book jacket: "To this day, the perception persists that China was a civilization defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade commodity, opium--a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in the iron grip off dependence. Britain, in an effort to reverse the damage caused by opium addiction, launched its own version of the 'war on drug.,' which lasted roughly sixty years, from 1880 to World War II and the beginning of communism. But, as Narcotic Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese history was not the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early nineteenth century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp the consequences of prohibition.").
Elizabeth C. Economy, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future, 2d edition (Ithaca & London: Cornell U. Press, 2004, 2010).
Elizabeth C. Economy & Michael Levi, By All Means Necessary: How China's Resource Quest Is Changing the World (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2014) ("Perhaps the biggest question mark looming over the future is the course that the Chinese economy will take. Economic activity can be broken down into investment, consumption, and export. The typical large economy gets the bulk of its economic activity from consumption, with smaller fractions coming from investment and export. For example, almost 70 percent of the U.S. economy is personal consumption, and and even higher fraction is attribute to consumption once consumption by government is factored in. Private investment makes up another 15 percent of the economy. Net exports for the United States have, for many years, been negative." "Chinese economic activity looks very different. It has long been heavily weighted toward investment, a trend that has only intensified in recent years. [] High investment and exports have been accompanied by low personal consumption, which remains stuck at around 35 percent of the economy." Id. at 32-33, citations omitted. "In the middle f the 2000s, a new security threat appeared to emerge. With resource prices rising rapidly, and shortages seemingly imminent, scholars and pundits began to warn of 'resource wars.' [] Indeed, one camp of analysts now argue that, with global resources insufficient to meet growing world demand, countries may be destined to go to war over control of available supplies. An opposing camp, however, insists that the prospect of resource wars is largely if not entirely nonsense. They argue that modern history shows few instances of war over resources. Moreover, they note, since most resources are now traded on world markets, ownership is far less important than one might assume. Countries can secure resources simply by paying the market price, leaving no need for them to go to war in order to acquire them." "The market-based critique of the resource wars warning is powerful. So long as resource prices do not rise astronomically (and few analysts foresee such a development), it will be far cheaper to acquire resources by paying market rates than by engaging in armed conflict. And even strong price rises compared to what prevailed a decade ago leave resource costs relatively modest relative to the overall size of big economies, including those of the United States and Chine. To the extent that China is afraid prices will rise intolerably, it can hedge its exposure by buying access to deposits on commercial terms, precisely the approach many Chinese companies have taken in recent years. Unless the world changes radically, it will not pay to invade foreign lands in order to win their natural resources." Id. at 138-139, citations omitted,).
Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2017) (From the book jacket: "Unlikely Partners recounts the story of how Chinese politicians and intellectuals looked beyond their country's borders for economic guidance at a key crossroads in the nation's tumultuous twentieth century. Julian Gewirtz offers a dramatic tale of competition for influence between reformers and hardline conservatives during the Deng Xiaoping era, bringing to light China's productive exchanges with the West. [] Nevertheless, the push from China' senior leadership to implement economic reforms did not go unchallenged, nor has the Chinese government been eager to publicize its engagement with Western-style innovation. Even today, Chinese Communists decry dangerous Western influences and officially maintain that China's economic reinvention was the party's achievement alone, Unlikely Partners sets forth the truer story, which has continuing relevance for China's complexioned far-reaching relationship with the West." From the text: "The scope of China's transformation over the past forty years staggers the mind. China is now the world's largest economy by purchasing power parity and is expected to overtake the United States as the largest economy by gross domestic product (GDP) by 2015." Id. at 1. "The episodes in this book are seldom discussed in the West, which also deserves explanation. One reason may be that they call into question the received assumptions about how Western countries influence the developing world--and, indeed, how economic development occurs. Instead of an inevitable teleology toward Western-defined 'development,' these stories show the negotiated acceptance of market ideas and global norms--by Chinese leaders, on Chinese terms. As countries around the world from Hungary to Cuba to South Africa openly praise the Chinese system as a seemingly viable alternative to the liberal capitalist model of many Western countries--and as China 'goes global' and attempts to spread its influence--it is critical for our policy makers and opinion leaders to rethink what they take for granted about what 'Western influence' can and cannot do in other countries. It is especially important that they do so when, as in China's case, the country in question rejects the wholesale importation of foreign proposals and sees itself as an equal partner in interpreting and implementing economic ideas from abroad and in shaping new ones." Id. at 274-275. Do you think anyone in the Trump administration will have read this book, or similar books and articles? Probably not.).
Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven & London: A New Republic Book/Yale U. Press, 2007).
Richard McGregor, Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century (New York: Viking, 2017).
Minxin Pei, China's Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2016) (From the book jacket: "Beginning in the 1990s, changes in the control and ownership rights of state-owned assets allowed well-connected government officials and businessmen to amass huge fortunes through the systematic looting of state-owned property--in particular land, natural resources, and assets in state-run enterprises. Mustering compelling evidence from over two hundred corruption cases involving government and law enforcement officials, private businessmen, and organized crime members, Minxin Pei shows how collision among elites has spawned an illicit market for power inside the party-state, in which bribes and official appointments are surreptitiously but routinely traded. This system of crony capitalism has created a legacy of criminality and entrenched privilege that will make any movement toward democracy difficult and disorderly." Well worth readings, as it may provide insight as how the United States's own growing version of crony capitalism is undermining American representative democracy.).
David Der-Wei Wang, ed., A New Literary History of Modern China (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2017) (From the "Introduction": "A New Literary History of Modern China is a collective project that introduces the 'long' modern period of Chinese literature from the lat eighteenth century to the new millennium. The volume, with 161 essays contributed by 143 authors on a wide spectrum of topics, is intended for readers who are interested in understanding modern China through its literary and cultural dynamics. At the same time it takes up the challenge of rethinking the conceptual framework and pedagogical assumptions that underlie the extant paradigm of writing and reading literary history." Id. at 1.).
Michael R. Auslin, The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World's Most Dynamic Region (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2017) (This is important background reading for those who appreciate that we all live in a highly interconnected, global community. The book might be better subtitled, "War, Stagnation, and the Risks to--and from--the World's Most Dynamic Region.").
Philip Ball, The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2016, 2017) ("Water . . . is one of the most powerful vehicles for Chinese thought. At the same time, and for the same reasons, it has been one of the key determinants of Chinese civilization. It has governed the fates of emperors, shaped the contours of Chinese philosophy, and left its mark, quite literally, throughout the Chinese language. It is with water that heaven communicates its judgements to earth. Water pronounces on the right to govern. For these reasons, there is no better medium for conveying to the barbarians beyond the Wall what is special, astonishing, beautiful, and at time terrifying and maddening, about the land its inhabitants call Zhongguo, the 'Middle Kingdom'--which is in the end the Water Kingdom, too." Id. at 3-4. "What's more, the mammoth constructions and schemes of a hydraulic state are inclined to demand suppression of any disrupting influence. No institutions or organizations can be allowed to grow strong enough to rival the governmental body politics; no checks to power can be tolerated. When the infrastructure of the state is so dependent on government support and control, property rights are weak at best--which meant that a mercantile class like that which eventually came to challenge (and in some cases to replace) the monarchies and aristocracies of Europe could never arise in imperial China. Merchants certainly existed, and they could get rich--but they did so by adapting to a situation in which power was acquired through the state machinery of the civil service. There were . . . power struggles in the Chinese empires, but they did not have the same anatomy as those that evolved in the West. We can see the legacy of this tradition today, whether in the piratical attitude that, with eh state's tacit approval, has long existed to intellectual and material copyright, or in the ruthless expulsion of people from their homes and lands, without right of appeal, in the name of progress. Id. at 201-202.).
Robert Bickers, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2017) (From the book jacket: "Nationalism matters in China, and what matters in China matters to everyone. China's new nationalism . . . is rooted not in its present power but in shameful memories of its former weaknesses. Invaded, humiliated, and looted in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by foreign powers, China looks out at the twenty-first century through the lens of the past. History natters deeply to Beijing's current rulers, and Out of China explains why.").
Frank Dikotter, The Age of Openness: China Before Mao (Berkeley & Los Angles: U. of California Press, 2008) (From the back cover: "The era between empire and communism is routinely portrayed as a catastrophic interlude in China's modern history. But . . . Frank Dikotter instead shows that the first half of the twentieth century was characterized by unprecedented openness. He argue that from 1900 to 1949, all levels of Chinese society were seeking engagement with the rest of he world and that pursuit of openness was particularly evident in four areas: governance, including advances liberties and the rule of law; greater freedom of movement within the country and outside it; the spirited exchange of ideas in the humanities and sciences; and thriving and open markets and the resulting sustained growth in China's economy. [] China was at its most diverse on the eve of World War II.")
Frank Dikotter, The Cultural Revolution: A People's History 1962-1976 (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016) (From the book jacket: "After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958-1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalist elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people.").
Frank Dikotter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, 2d. ed. (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2015) (From the book jacket: "First published in 1992, The Discourse of Rave in Modern China rapidly became a classic, showing for the first time on the basis of detailed evidence how and why racial categorization became so widespread in China. After the country's devastating defeat against Japan in 1895, leading reformers like Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei turned away from the Confucian classics to seek enlightenment abroad, hoping to find the keys to wealth and power on the distant shores of Europe. Instead, they discovered the notion of 'race,' and used new evolutionary theories from Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer to present a universes red in tooth and claw in which 'yellows' competed with 'whites' in a deadly struggle for survival. After the fall of the empire in 1911, prominent politicians and writers in republican China continued to measure, classify and rank people from around the world according to their supposed biological features, all in the name of science. Racial thinking remains popular in the People's Republic of China, as serologists, geneticists and anthropometrists continue to interpret human variation in terms of 'race.' This new edition has been revised and expanded to include a new chapter taking the reader up to the twenty-first century.").
Frank Dikotter, Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe,1958-1962 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010) ("What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier transforms our understanding of the Great Leap Forward. When it comes to the overall death toll, for instance, researchers so far have had to extrapolate from official population statistics, including the census figures of 1953, 1964 and 1982. Their estimates range from 15 to 32 million excess deaths. But the public security reports complied at the time, as well as the voluminous secret reports collated by party committees in the last months of the Great Leap Forward, show how inadequate these calculations are, pointing instead at a catastrophe of a much greater magnitude: this book shows that at least 45 million people died unnecessarily between 1958 and 1962." Id. at xii.).
Frank Dikotter, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013) ("[T]the first decade of Maoism was one of the worst tyrannies in the history of the twentieth century, sending to an early grave at least 5 million civilians and bringing misery to countless more." Id. at xiii. "But by all accounts the most dreaded aspect of incarceration was not the frequent beatings, the hard about or even the grinding hunger. It was the thought reform, referred to by one victim as a 'carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind.' As Robert Ford, an English radio operator, put it after a four-year spell in prison, 'When you're being beaten up, you can turn into yourself and find a corner of your mind in which to fight the pain. But when you're being spiritual tortured by thought reform, there's nowhere you can go. It affects you at the most profound, deepest levels and attacks your very identity.' The self-criticism and indoctrination meetings lasted for hours on end, day in, day out, year after year. And unlike those on the outside, once the group discussions were over, the others were still in the same cell. They were encouraged to examine, question and denounce each other. Sometimes they had to take part in brutal struggle meetings, proving on whose side they stood by beating a suspect. 'By the time you got through such a meeting you would, if you were a conscientious person at all, suffer terribly mentally and groan for days. Silence and distress were the outcome.' Every bit of human dignity was stripped away as victims tried to survive by killing their former selves. Wang Tsunming, a nationalist officer captured in 1949, came to the conclusion that thought reform was nothing less than the 'physical and mental liquidation of oneself by oneself.' Those who resisted the process committed suicide. This who survived it renounced being themselves." Id. at 248.).
Frank Dikotter, Lars Laamann, & Zhou Xun, Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2004) (From the book jacket: "To this day, the perception persists that China was a civilization defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade commodity, opium--a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in the iron grip off dependence. Britain, in an effort to reverse the damage caused by opium addiction, launched its own version of the 'war on drug.,' which lasted roughly sixty years, from 1880 to World War II and the beginning of communism. But, as Narcotic Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese history was not the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early nineteenth century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp the consequences of prohibition.").
Elizabeth C. Economy, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future, 2d edition (Ithaca & London: Cornell U. Press, 2004, 2010).
Elizabeth C. Economy & Michael Levi, By All Means Necessary: How China's Resource Quest Is Changing the World (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2014) ("Perhaps the biggest question mark looming over the future is the course that the Chinese economy will take. Economic activity can be broken down into investment, consumption, and export. The typical large economy gets the bulk of its economic activity from consumption, with smaller fractions coming from investment and export. For example, almost 70 percent of the U.S. economy is personal consumption, and and even higher fraction is attribute to consumption once consumption by government is factored in. Private investment makes up another 15 percent of the economy. Net exports for the United States have, for many years, been negative." "Chinese economic activity looks very different. It has long been heavily weighted toward investment, a trend that has only intensified in recent years. [] High investment and exports have been accompanied by low personal consumption, which remains stuck at around 35 percent of the economy." Id. at 32-33, citations omitted. "In the middle f the 2000s, a new security threat appeared to emerge. With resource prices rising rapidly, and shortages seemingly imminent, scholars and pundits began to warn of 'resource wars.' [] Indeed, one camp of analysts now argue that, with global resources insufficient to meet growing world demand, countries may be destined to go to war over control of available supplies. An opposing camp, however, insists that the prospect of resource wars is largely if not entirely nonsense. They argue that modern history shows few instances of war over resources. Moreover, they note, since most resources are now traded on world markets, ownership is far less important than one might assume. Countries can secure resources simply by paying the market price, leaving no need for them to go to war in order to acquire them." "The market-based critique of the resource wars warning is powerful. So long as resource prices do not rise astronomically (and few analysts foresee such a development), it will be far cheaper to acquire resources by paying market rates than by engaging in armed conflict. And even strong price rises compared to what prevailed a decade ago leave resource costs relatively modest relative to the overall size of big economies, including those of the United States and Chine. To the extent that China is afraid prices will rise intolerably, it can hedge its exposure by buying access to deposits on commercial terms, precisely the approach many Chinese companies have taken in recent years. Unless the world changes radically, it will not pay to invade foreign lands in order to win their natural resources." Id. at 138-139, citations omitted,).
Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2017) (From the book jacket: "Unlikely Partners recounts the story of how Chinese politicians and intellectuals looked beyond their country's borders for economic guidance at a key crossroads in the nation's tumultuous twentieth century. Julian Gewirtz offers a dramatic tale of competition for influence between reformers and hardline conservatives during the Deng Xiaoping era, bringing to light China's productive exchanges with the West. [] Nevertheless, the push from China' senior leadership to implement economic reforms did not go unchallenged, nor has the Chinese government been eager to publicize its engagement with Western-style innovation. Even today, Chinese Communists decry dangerous Western influences and officially maintain that China's economic reinvention was the party's achievement alone, Unlikely Partners sets forth the truer story, which has continuing relevance for China's complexioned far-reaching relationship with the West." From the text: "The scope of China's transformation over the past forty years staggers the mind. China is now the world's largest economy by purchasing power parity and is expected to overtake the United States as the largest economy by gross domestic product (GDP) by 2015." Id. at 1. "The episodes in this book are seldom discussed in the West, which also deserves explanation. One reason may be that they call into question the received assumptions about how Western countries influence the developing world--and, indeed, how economic development occurs. Instead of an inevitable teleology toward Western-defined 'development,' these stories show the negotiated acceptance of market ideas and global norms--by Chinese leaders, on Chinese terms. As countries around the world from Hungary to Cuba to South Africa openly praise the Chinese system as a seemingly viable alternative to the liberal capitalist model of many Western countries--and as China 'goes global' and attempts to spread its influence--it is critical for our policy makers and opinion leaders to rethink what they take for granted about what 'Western influence' can and cannot do in other countries. It is especially important that they do so when, as in China's case, the country in question rejects the wholesale importation of foreign proposals and sees itself as an equal partner in interpreting and implementing economic ideas from abroad and in shaping new ones." Id. at 274-275. Do you think anyone in the Trump administration will have read this book, or similar books and articles? Probably not.).
Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven & London: A New Republic Book/Yale U. Press, 2007).
Richard McGregor, Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century (New York: Viking, 2017).
Minxin Pei, China's Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2016) (From the book jacket: "Beginning in the 1990s, changes in the control and ownership rights of state-owned assets allowed well-connected government officials and businessmen to amass huge fortunes through the systematic looting of state-owned property--in particular land, natural resources, and assets in state-run enterprises. Mustering compelling evidence from over two hundred corruption cases involving government and law enforcement officials, private businessmen, and organized crime members, Minxin Pei shows how collision among elites has spawned an illicit market for power inside the party-state, in which bribes and official appointments are surreptitiously but routinely traded. This system of crony capitalism has created a legacy of criminality and entrenched privilege that will make any movement toward democracy difficult and disorderly." Well worth readings, as it may provide insight as how the United States's own growing version of crony capitalism is undermining American representative democracy.).
David Der-Wei Wang, ed., A New Literary History of Modern China (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2017) (From the "Introduction": "A New Literary History of Modern China is a collective project that introduces the 'long' modern period of Chinese literature from the lat eighteenth century to the new millennium. The volume, with 161 essays contributed by 143 authors on a wide spectrum of topics, is intended for readers who are interested in understanding modern China through its literary and cultural dynamics. At the same time it takes up the challenge of rethinking the conceptual framework and pedagogical assumptions that underlie the extant paradigm of writing and reading literary history." Id. at 1.).
Saturday, January 20, 2018
BY KHIZR KHAN
Khizr Khan, An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice (New York: Random House, 2017).
Khizr Khan & Anne Quirk, This Is Our Constitution: Discover America with a Gold Star Father (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Khizr Khan & Anne Quirk, This Is Our Constitution: Discover America with a Gold Star Father (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Friday, January 19, 2018
Thursday, January 18, 2018
ADDICTION AS A FORM OF MISFITTERY
Lidia Yuknavith, The Misfit's Manifesto, with artwork by Alex Brewer (HENSE) (New York: TED Books. Simon & Schuster, 20017):
Another kind of misfit, then, is the addict. The recovering addict as well as the addict in the throes of their addiction. I truly wish we had better words for all that though, because increasingly the gap between the so-called addicted person and the so-called not addicted person is closing.Id. at 83.
Addiction may be the logical extension of late capitalism.
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
A HYMN TO THE EMBATTLED CITY OF JERUSALEM / AL-QUDS
Adonis, Concerto al-Quds, translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2017).
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
MEDIEVAL JAIN STORIES
Phyllis Granoff, ed., The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden: An Anthology of Medieval Jain Stories, selected translated and with an introduction by Phyllis Granoff (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2006).
TELUGU DALIT WRITING
K. Purushotham, Gita Ramaswamy, & Gogu Shyamala, eds., The Oxford India Anthology of Telegu Dalit Writing (New Delhi: Oxford U. Press, 2016).
Monday, January 15, 2018
INSPECTOR MAIGRET #2
Georges Simenon, The Late Monsieur Gallet (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by Anthea Bell (New York: Penguin Books, 2013) ("You needn't try to understand, but when all the material clues manage to confuse matters rather than clarify them, it means they've been faked . . ." Id. at 139.).
Sunday, January 14, 2018
CENTIPEDE PRESS'S BERNARD TAYLOR
Bernard Taylor, The Godsend, introduction by Bev Vincent, with Cover artwork by Lisa Desimini (Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2017).
Bernard Taylor, Sweetheart, Sweetheart, introduction by Charles Grant, with Cover artwork by Lisa Desimini (Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2017).
Bernard Taylor, This Is Midnight and Other Stories, with Cover artwork by Lisa Desimini (Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2017).
Bernard Taylor, Sweetheart, Sweetheart, introduction by Charles Grant, with Cover artwork by Lisa Desimini (Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2017).
Bernard Taylor, This Is Midnight and Other Stories, with Cover artwork by Lisa Desimini (Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2017).
Saturday, January 13, 2018
LET'S ACKNOWLEDGE A HARD FACT: DONALD J. TRUMP IS AN EMPTY SUIT*
Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (New York: Henry Holt, 2018).
* Empty suit: a prominent person regarded as lacking substance, personality, or ability.
* Empty suit: a prominent person regarded as lacking substance, personality, or ability.
THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY
Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 1) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).
Jeff Vandermeer, Authority (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 2) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).
Jeff Vandermeer, Acceptance (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 3) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).
Jeff Vandermeer, Authority (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 2) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).
Jeff Vandermeer, Acceptance (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 3) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).
Friday, January 12, 2018
BEWARE OF FASCIST'S SOFT POWER
Benjamin G. Martin, The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2016):
This book tells the story of how Nazi Germany, in close cooperation with fascist Italy and with the collaboration of intellectuals and official from across the continent, created a cultural new order in Europe. Beginning already in 1934, Germans and Italians reshaped the forums and institutions through which continental cultural elites interacted, recast the legal and economic structures that controlled the transnational market in cultural goods and redefined ideological attitudes about what 'European culture' was or should be. This project--what might be called the soft power of Nazi and fascist imperialism--formed an important element of both regimes' efforts to achieve hegemony in Europe. It succeeded in mobilizing supporters across the continent. It lasted nearly as long as Hitler's regime, collapsing only when the Allies' military victories made it impossible to proceed. Reworking institutions and ideas in the fields of film, classical music, and literature, the Nazi-fascist cultural New Order marked a crucial episode in the history of the idea, and the reality, of European culture.Id. at 1-2. Note: In twenty-first-century America, pause to reconsider the agendas of some of those extreme right-wing think tanks, university centers, and other cultural venues.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
AARON BURR'S CONSPIRACY
James E. Lewis, Jr., The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2017) (Makes onr wonder whether 200 years from now historians will still be debated the Trump/Russia conspiracy.).
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
IS AMERICA AT RISK OF "CONSTITUTIONAL DICTATORSHIP"?
Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies, with a new introduction by William J. Quirk (New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers, 1948, 2002):
Also, Quirk's comment about legal education is worth noting.
Constitutional dictatorship is a dangerous thing. A declaration of martial law or the passage of an enabling act is a step which must always be feared and sometimes bitterly resisted, for it is at once an admission of the incapacity of democratic institutions to defend the order within which they function and a too conscious employment of powers and methods long ago outlawed as destructive of constitutional government. . .Id. at 294-296. As Quirk notes in his "Introduction to the Transaction Edition", Rossiter's book remains important and timely in this age of America's war on terror. What he does not say, because Trump's election was still fourteen years in the future, is that we should be especially concerned that persons with autocratic tendencies (e.g., Trump) could use the crisis/emergency of the war on terror to assert dictatorial powers. Trump seems to have a less than natural love for most dictators and autocrats.
The most obvious danger of constitutional dictatorship, or of any of its institutions, is the unpleasant possibility that such dictatorship will abandon its qualifying adjective and become permanent and unconstitutional. . .
The institutions of constitutional dictatorship are not only uniquely available as instruments for a coup d'etat; they are also ideal for the purposes of reactionary forces not so much interested in subverting the constitutional order as they are in thwarting all legal and electoral attempts to dislodge them from their entrenched positions of power. . .
A third risk inherent in the constitutional employment of dictatorial institutions is the simple fact that changes less than revolutionary, but nonetheless changes, will be worked in the permanent structure of government and society. No constitutional government ever passed through a period in which emergency powers were used without undergoing some figure of permanent alteration, always in the direction of an aggrandizement of the power of the state. . .
A further danger to democracy is inherent in the implicit and even positive acknowledgment that the regular institutions of constitutional government do not have the virility to protect the state from the dangers of war, rebellion, or economic collapse. . .
Finally, it is obvious that individual abuses of public power are more likely to occur under conditions of crisis and in the prosecution of extraordinary duties than in normal times and in pursuit of normal duties. . .
Also, Quirk's comment about legal education is worth noting.
American law schools, however, teach today, as they have taught generations of lawyers, that the U.S. Constitution is never suspended; it is at all times in full force and effect. The law schools are correct that our Constitution--unlike the Weimar Constitution--makes no express provision for its suspension. Supreme Court doctrine, which is what the law schools teach, does not recognize any implied presidential power to suspend the Constitution: 'The Consttution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.' In short, 'emergency does not increase constitutional power nor diminish constitutional restriction' (Ex parte Milligan).Id. at x.
The trouble with this view of course, is that it is inaccurate. Roster proves this over and over in his analysis of presidential action during the Civil War, World War I, the Depression, and World War II. The problem created by our law schools teaching Supreme Court rhetoric other than historical truth is that the legal profession, critical in all aspects of the use of emergency power, is misinformed. They should all read Rossiter as soon as possible.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
FOUR MAIN CAUSES OF RACIAL VIOLENCE
John Hersey, The Algiers Hotel Incident, with a new introduction by Thomas J. Sugrue (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1968, 1988):
There are four main causes of racial violence: unequal justice, unequal employment opportunities, unequal housing, unequal education. This book, to put it in perspective, deals only with the first. I believe that is the one that should be attacked first, because it is at the cutting edge of the deeper anger of those without whom there would be no summer rebellions, the young black males; and because, to be practical about it, its remedy would cost not a cent. The remedy is in the minds of of men. Unequal justice is experienced by the black populace at two points; what happens with the cop in the street, and what happens with the prosecutor and lawyer and judge in court.Id. at 37.
Monday, January 8, 2018
INSPECTOR MAIGRET #1
Georges Simenon, Pietr the Latvian (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by David Bellos (New York: Penguin Books, 2013) ("It would be an exaggeration to say that in most criminal inquires cordial relations arise between the police and the person they are trying to corner into a confession. All the same, they almost always become close to some degree (unless the suspect is just a glowering brute). That must be because for weeks and sometimes months on end the police and the suspect do nothing but think about each other." Id. at 144.).
Sunday, January 7, 2018
"ABOLISHING THE EXCLUSION OF OTHERS"
Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to Give Love, Create Beauty and Find Peace (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press, 2014) ("What is the implication of Jesus-centric non-theological, non-dogmatic salvation? It's the abolishing of exclusion of the other as 'unsaved.' [] In other words Jesus decouples the credulous attachment to a tribal geography and religion-based identity. Jesus declares we're all one family. Goodbye, Abrahamic covenant, Jerusalem, Mecca, Rome and Constantinople. Au revoir, holy places, River Ganges, passports, borders, empires, Lourdes, clan, tribe, Hellenism, Russian imperial ambitions and American exceptionalism. No more chants of 'USA! USA!' for, 'a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth.' According to Jesus, there never was and never will be a 'greater country on earth,' or a 'city set on a hill' or a chosen people.'" Id. at 50.).
Saturday, January 6, 2018
SUGGESTED FICTION: PSYCHOOGICAL SUSPENSE
A. J. Finn, The Woman in the Window: A Novel (New York: Morrow, 2017).
Petra Hammesfahr, The Sinner: A Novel, translated from the German by John Brownjohn (New York: Penguin Books, 2017).
Petra Hammesfahr, The Sinner: A Novel, translated from the German by John Brownjohn (New York: Penguin Books, 2017).
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF?
Tim Crane, The Meaning of Belief: Religion from an Atheist's Point of View (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2017) ("This book . . . is not about the truth of religious belief but about its meaning: what is means to believe in religious ideas, what it means for believers, and what it should mean for nonbelievers too." Id. at 3).
Friday, January 5, 2018
ARE WE FREE/AUTONOMOUS BEINGS? OR, ARE WE STUCK IN OUR SOCIOECONOMIC PLACES?
Neel Mukherjee, A State of Freedom: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2017) (From the book jacket: "What happened when one attempts to exchange the life one is given for something better? Can we transform the possibilities we are born into?").
Thursday, January 4, 2018
JOHN ADAMS & THOMAS JEFFERSON
Gordon S. Wood, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (New York: Penguin Press, 2017).
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
WOMEN AND THE NEED TO REDEFINE 'POWER'
Mary Beard, Women and Power: A Manifesto (New York: Liveright, 2017):
[I]f I am right about the deep cultural structures legitimating women's exclusion, gradualism is likely to take far too long--for me at least. We have to be more reflective about what power is, what it is for, and how it is measured. To put it another way, if women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather then women?Id. at at 83.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
THE INTANGIBLE ECONOMY
Jonathan Haskel & Stian Westlake, Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2018) ("Our central argument in this book is that there is something fundamentally different about intangible investment, and that understanding the steady move to intangible investments help us understand some of the key issues facing us today: innovation and growth, inequality, the role of management, and financial and policy reform." Id. at 7. From the book jacket: "Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, from tech firms and parma companies to coffee ships and gyms, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-ten success.").
Monday, January 1, 2018
THE POSTDEMOCRATIC SYSTEM
Eugene Halton, The Great Brain Suck and Other American Epiphanies (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2008) (From "The Great Brain Suck": "Just as Vaclav Havel depicted the ascendance of the post totalitarian system in communist countries after Stalin's death, we have the coming to being what could be termed the postdemocratic system in America. By posttotalitarian he meant that totalitarianism for from bring over, had entered a new phase, shifting form the cult of personality characterizing the first generation to totalitarianism--with Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Ataturk--to a system running on virtual automatic pilot. Similarly, by post democratic system I mean a society that has lost it grounded democratic processes--ranging from vital neighborhood institutions to national political culture--in favor of the 'automatic pilot' of media, commercial, and celebrity requirements." Id. at 1, 7. From "Out of the Fifties": "Fundable social science also bloomed in this era, riding the prosperity and the scientific ideal that survey research could replace mere social critique. Today the commodification of scholarship in the academy is so debased that departments actually list the ability to procure money as a consideration in hiring someone. Universities hold amounts of monies and grants as ideals for researchers to pursue, even humanities scholars, and corporate bureaucratic structures have become models that universities increasingly emulate. What a far cry from 'The American Scholar,' who is, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it: 'In the right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.' Surely the elevation of procuring money to a virtue of scholarship represents the 'degenerate state' signaled by Emerson, not only for militarized scientific research but also the corporatized models of 'intellectual life' in general." Id. at 43, 46. From "Communicating Democracy: Or Shine, Perishing Republic": "American politics, and perhaps American culture more generally, seems to have become dislocated to the concept of the empty symbol, which mirrors back to the individual only what the individual will want to see. The empty symbol, as politicians use it, is perhaps similar to a technique in psychotherapy associated with Carl Rogers in which the therapist repeats the patient's statements as if saying something new, thereby prompting the patient to continue without having to take the lead. Similarly, if less empathically, the empty symbolist is one who attempts to signify anything while saying nothing. This is a smiling politics, the feel-good politics of Ronald Reagan, the sound bite and flag politics of the George Bushes, the politics that prevented Michael Dukakis from admitting he was a liberal in the 1988 presidential election and got Clinton to bypass it completely. It is a politics of entertainment, cynicism, and kitsch." Id. at 112, 114. From "The Art and Craft of Home": "As Tom Litton, an owner of a storage facility and representative of the industry, pointed out in an NPR radio interview we did on 'Storing the Self,' many people are living in larger homes yet still have so much stuff they need to parcel it out to storage facilities. Glut is a growing reason to store things in an America undergoing an obesity epidemic and what might be called a 'stuff epidemic.' Between 2001 and 2005 new storage in self-storage facilities increased by 36 percent, and whereas it took twenty-five years to build the first billion square feet of storage space between 1973 and 1998, it only took eight years to build the second billion square feet between 1998 and 2005. Americans are adrift in a Tsunami of stuff, unable to discard it or stop buying more of it." Id. at 206, 216.).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)