Thursday, May 31, 2018
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
THE THE WIEMAR REPUBLIC
Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (New York: Henry Holt, 2018) (From the book jacket: "Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these question, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances of our own time.").
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
ADDICTION
Sigrid Rausing, Mayhem: A Memoir (New York: Knopf, 2017):
You can argue the causes of addiction and the efficacy of treatment models every which way. I believe that addiction is a spectrum condition--and that we are all on the spectrum. The neurological model, based on the binary distinction between neurotypical and addictive brains, one or the other, doesn't seem to me to recognize that. The genetic model of course is less binary, since the view now is that so many genes are involved, one way or another. Each one plays a part. And I imagine it's likely that some mutations give protection against addiction, rather than the other way around.Id. at 77.
Monday, May 28, 2018
INSPECTOR MAIGRET #21
Georges Simenon, The Cellars of the Majestic (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by Howard Curtis (New York: Penguin Books, 2015) ("'Do you know what I think? . . . I think . . . that you've always been unlucky . . . It struck the first time I saw you . . . There are people like that, who never succeed at anything, and I've noticed that they're also the ones who end up with the most unpleasant disease and infirmities . . . ' " Id. at 149.).
Saturday, May 26, 2018
DISCRIMIONATION AND DISPARITIES
Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities (New York: Basic Books, 2018):
A categorical institution like the government cannot be expected to make the best incremental trade-offs. History suggests that government cannot do so, especially when operating within the confines of a social vision based on assumptions of sameness, or at least comparability, among people, when there is no such sameness or comparability even within an underclass minority community in the United States, much less between an underclass minority community and middle-class communities of either minority or majority populationsId. at 122..
What can be seen from history, however, is that when people sort themselves out, instead of having the government do so, they seem to get better results--not without strife but with less strife than in later times when government 'solutions' abounded, and so did racial polarization.
Friday, May 25, 2018
ISLAM AND THE EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT
Alexander Bevilacqua, The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2018) (From the book jacket: "In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a pioneering community of Christian scholars laid the groundwork for the modern Western understanding of Islamic civilization. These men produced the first accurate translation of the Qur'an into a European language, mapped the branches of the Islamic arts and sciences, and wrote Muslim history using Arabic sources. The Republic of Arabic Letters reconstruct this process, revealing the influence of Catholic and Protestant intellectuals on the secular Enlightenment understanding of Islam and its written traditions." [] "The Republic of Arabic Letters shows that the Western effort to learn about Islam and its religious and intellectual traditions issued not from a secular agenda but from the scholarly commitment of a select group of Christians. The authors cast aside inherited views and bequeathed a new understanding of Islam to the modern West.").
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
THE RADICAL EVENT OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Jonathan Israel, The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2017) ("Americans often remained (and remain) unaware that their Founding Fathers were predominantly irreligious deists and atheists privately repudiating religion. Freeing the individual as far as possible from clerical tutelage and widening toleration, as well as disestablishing churches, and separating church and state, represented an indispensable goal for the American Revolution's leading figures since most were Unitarians, deists, or nonbelievers." Id. at 86. "The great majority of those who participated in the framing of the United States Constitution of 1787 had no wish to extend the reach of popular participation in political life; their main goal was to retain control within the hands of the existing political elites." Id. at 79.).
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Monday, May 21, 2018
INSPECTOR MAIGRET #20
Georges Simenon, Cecile is Dead (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by Anthea Bell (New York: Penguin Books, 2015) ("The lawyer, sitting back in his rattan chair and warming the brandy glass in his podgy hand, murmured optimistically, 'Take no notice, the police are like that. They don't care for dealing with businessmen, you see, so it annoyed him to find me here. You can rely on me to . . .'" Id. at 90-91.).
Sunday, May 20, 2018
UNDERSTANDING PRIVATE, PUBLIC, & STRUCTURAL AMERICAN ISLAMOPHOBIA
Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots of Rise of Fear (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018) (From the book jacket: "The term 'Islamophobia' may be fairly new, but irrational fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims are anything but. Though many speak of Islamophobia's roots in racism, have we considered how anti-Muslim rhetoric is rooted in our legal system? [] Bedouin captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the United States.").
Saturday, May 19, 2018
SUGGESTED FICTION
Fleur Jaeggy, I Am the Brother of XX: Stories, translated from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff (New York: New Directions Books, 2015, 2017).
Karl Ove Knausgaard, Spring, with illustrations by Anna Bjerger, translated form the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey (New York: Penguin Press, 2018).
Karl Ove Knausgaard, Spring, with illustrations by Anna Bjerger, translated form the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey (New York: Penguin Press, 2018).
Friday, May 18, 2018
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
ARE OUR BETTER ANGELS IN RETREAT?
Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle For Our Better Angels (New York: Random House, 2018).
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Monday, May 14, 2018
TRUMP IS FUCKING AMERICA! JOIN THE RESISTANCE!
Time to join the resistance, German newsmagazine says, “against America.”
Germany’s respected weekly news publication Der Spiegel doesn’t much care for Donald Trump. But after the U.S. president announced the nation is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, the magazine pulled out all the stops, portraying Trump on its cover as a blond-mopped middle finger flipping off all of Europe. “Goodbye, Europe!” says the digit.
SUGGESTED FICTION
John Edgar Wideman, American Histories: Stories (New York: Scribners, 2018) (From the book jacket: "John Edgar Wideman . . . blends the personal, historical, and political to invent complex, charged stories about love, death, struggle, and what we owe each other.").
INSPECTOR MAGRET #19
Georges Simenon, Maigret (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by Ros Schwartz (New York: Penguin Books, 2015) ("'You see, in a situation like yours, there is only one place where you are safe. And that's in prison.'" Id. at 84.).
Sunday, May 13, 2018
WAR IS A MEANS TO AN END, NOT AN END IN ITSELF
John Lewis Gaddis, On Grand Strategy (New York: Penguin Press, 2018).
Saturday, May 12, 2018
CLASSIFYING (DESIRABLE, LESS DESIRABLE, UNDESIRABLE) IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA
Joel Perlman, America Classifies the Immigrants: From Ellis Island to the 2020 Census (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard University Press, 2018).
Friday, May 11, 2018
AMERICA'S SO-CALLED "IMMIGRATION PROBLEM"
Katherine Benton-Cohen, Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard University Press, 2018).
Thursday, May 10, 2018
REFUGEE
Viet Thanh Nguyen, ed., The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives (New York: Abrams Press, 2018):
We should remember that justice is not the same as law. Many laws say that borders are sacrosanct, and that crossing borders without permission is a crime. Unpermitted migrants are these criminals and the refugee camp is a kind of prison. But if borders are legal, are they also just? Our notions of borders have shifted over the centuries just as our notion of justice and humanity have. Today we can usually move freely between cities within a country, even if those cities were once their own entities with their own borders and had fought wars with each other. Now we look back on those times of city-states--if we remember them--and I doubt few of us would want to return to such conditions.Id. at 18-19.
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
"LEGAL LYNCHING"
Melanie S. Morrison, Murder on Shades Mountain: The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2018).
Monday, May 7, 2018
EDWARD GOREY
Erin Monroe, Robert Greskovic, Arnold Arluke, & Kevin Shortsleeve, Corey's World (Hartford, Ct: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018).
INSPECTOR MAIGRET #18
Georges Simenon, Lock No. 1 (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by David Coward (New York: Penguin Books, 2015) ("When you watch fish though a layer of water which prevents all contact between them and you, you see that they remain absolutely still for a long time, for no reason, and then, with a twitch of their fins, they dart away so that they can do nothing again somewhere else, except more waiting." Id. at 3.).
Sunday, May 6, 2018
INCARCERATING JAPANESE AMERICANS DURING WWII
Richard Cahan & Michael Williams, Un-American: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II: Images by Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Other Government Photographers (Chicago: Cityfiles Press, 2016):
Note to the ReaderId. at 14.
About the Words
The precise use of words is essential when discussing this chapter of U.S. history. We are influenced by Power of Words Handbook: A Guide to Language About Japanese Americans in World War II, published in 2013 by the Japanese American Citizens League and available online. Misleading words shroud the reality of what actually happened during the war. Japanese Americans on the West Coast were not 'evacuated,' which connotes that they were taken away for their own good. They did not go to an 'assembly center,' which sounds like a place to gather for a parade.
When referring to people of Japanese ancestry, we generally use the term 'Japanese Americans.' Some were immigrants; others were U.S. citizens. Issei (meaning 'first generation') emigrated from Japan and were ineligible for citizenship until the passage of immigration laws in 1952. Nisei ('second generation') were their children, who were citizens because they were born in the United States. Both groups had abiding stakes in America, making them Japanese Americans.
We prefer 'incarceration' to 'internment,' which has been used improperly for decades. Because Issei were born in a country with which the United State was at war, they were classified as enemy aliens. The term for the confinement of enemy aliens is 'internment.' That term does not apply when citizens are confined. Many Japanese Americans prefer the term 'incarceration' for the confinement of both groups.
The government used the term 'evacuation'; we prefer 'forced removal.' The government used 'relocation'; we prefer 'incarceration.' The government use 'assembly center'; we use the term in the proper names of camps but otherwise prefer 'temporary detention center,' or 'temporary incarceration center.' The same holds for 'relocation center,' which we use in proper names of camps but prefer 'permanent detention center,' or 'permanent incarceration center.' Some Japanese Americans prefer 'concentation camps.' that is exactly what thee camps were, but we do not use that term because of its association with European concentration camps in World War II, which are more aptly described as 'death camps.'
Saturday, May 5, 2018
Friday, May 4, 2018
FROM VIETNAM TO WHITE POWER MOVEMENT
Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard University Press, 2018):
Vegas Tenold, Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America (New York: Nation Books, 2018).
Understanding white power as a social movement is a project both of historic relevance and of vital public importance. Knowledge of the story of white power activism is integral to preventing future acts of violence and to providing vital context to current political develop,tents. Indeed, to perceive the movement as a legitimate social force, and it ideologies as comprising a coherent worldview of white supremacy and imminent apocalypse--one with continued recruiting power--is to understand that colorblindness, multicultural consensus, and a post racial society were never achieved. Violent, outright racism and antisemitism were live currents in these decades, waiting for the opportunity to resurface in overt form. This story renders legible the many ways that racial ideology and incessant warfare have underwritten political issues that extend well beyond the fringe. It powerfully reveals how white power rhetoric and activism, time and again, have influenced mainstream U.S. policies, and most especially in the aftermath of war.Id. at 239.
Vegas Tenold, Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America (New York: Nation Books, 2018).
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
AMERICANS ARE DELUSION WHEN THINKING CLASS DOESN'T MATTER
Steve Fraser, Class Matters: The Strange Career of an American Delusion (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2018).
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
YOU ARE BEING MONITORED CONSTANTLY!
Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet (New York: PublicAffairs, 2018).
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