Barack Obama. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
New York: Crown Publishers, 2006
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Written with one eye towards an impending presidential campaign The Audacity of Hope is in many ways a testament to Barack Obama's traditionalism. Rather than casting the Senator from Illinois as sui generis even a cursory perusal of this book belies notions of Obama's political uniqueness and originality. With particular attention to chapter eight i.e. “The World Beyond Our Borders” is illustrative of this point. In Weberian terminology Obama may inspire charismatically but his real metier is that of a traditional appeal to well established values.
Chapter eight is largely about Obama's interpretation of the Cold War. It reads something like a high school textbook in that the actions of messrs. Truman, Acheson, Marshall, and Kennan were a heroic response to Soviet expansionism. They were at the center of the design of the post World War II world order which, had by necessity, the US government in a starring role. Obama maintains that the security situation in 2008 is much different than it was in the halcyon days of the Cold War. Although, it seems that this argument is either naïve or disingenuous. Other than the departure of the US government's erstwhile partner in global management the same national security paradigm, albeit with the US as the headlining hegemon, remains firmly in place. Obama's political weltanschauung is quintessentially that of a Cold War liberal.
Unlike the author of the felicitous locution “audacity of hope” Obama does not use words like “oppression” and “imperialism” when describing the past or present role of the US government in the world. Jeremiah Wright unconstrained by electoral strictures is free to “say what a pastor says” and engage in the subversive activity of truth telling. The prophetic tradition of truth telling (and enraging the complacent ones) is neither an effective means of fetching votes nor is it in Barack Obama's nature to seek out confrontation.
Burling 2nd floor E901.1.O23 A3 2006
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
Walter Giersbach '61 writes:
Friends,
You may want to consider acquiring Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber, '60 or '61. The New York Times Book Review (4/20/08) gave it a thumbnail, saying Ben's thesis is that "we live in a 'radical consumerist society,' shaped by an 'infantilist ethos' as potent as Weber's Protestant ethic once was. 'Affiliated with an ideology of privatization, the marketing of brands and a homogenization of taste'...this ethos sustains consumer capitalism 'at the expense of both civility and civilzation and a growing risk to capitalism itself."
1st floor Smith Memorial HC110.C6 B324 2007
Friends,
You may want to consider acquiring Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber, '60 or '61. The New York Times Book Review (4/20/08) gave it a thumbnail, saying Ben's thesis is that "we live in a 'radical consumerist society,' shaped by an 'infantilist ethos' as potent as Weber's Protestant ethic once was. 'Affiliated with an ideology of privatization, the marketing of brands and a homogenization of taste'...this ethos sustains consumer capitalism 'at the expense of both civility and civilzation and a growing risk to capitalism itself."
Ben has been a prolific contributor to critical thinking. He is the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and president and director of CivWorld. More on his publications can be found at http://www.benjaminbarber.com/biblio.html.
--Keep up the good work.
Walt Giersbach '61
1st floor Smith Memorial HC110.C6 B324 2007
Holling C. Holling, Children's Illustrator
Holling C. Holling, Master of Geo-Naturalistic Picture Books
By Walter Giersbach '61
An obituary in 1978 stated that Holling Clancy Holling “was best known for his geo-historical-fiction volumes for children, believed that children’s literature should be both entertaining and instructive and therefore filled his adventuresome tales with well-researched historical and scientific data.” This terse summary in Twentieth Century Children's Writers (St. Martin's Press) hardly does justice to a giant of children’s literature.
Holling (Aug. 2, 1900-Sept. 7, 1973) introduced me to a world that was both familiar and exotic when I was a child. Paddle-to-the Sea magnified my homely toy boat-building and married it to the alien geography of Lake Nipigon in Canada. The adventure of an Indian boy’s canoe opened a vista of snowmelt turning into burbling stream before becoming the mighty St. Laurence that floated his model canoe to the ocean. Was there ever a child who didn’t wonder if someone might read his message in a bottle floated out to sea—and empathize with the Indian boy?
Six decades later, with time to sieve through memories, I sought to learn who this writer/illustrator was. Generations of young readers have been attracted to Holling’s stories as much for his watercolor illustrations that drew on the American Realist School of Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood as for his stories of mythic proportions. Paddle-to-the-Sea, a Caldecott Honor Book in 1941, so resonated with early readers that it has remained in print for 66 years. It is still recommended by educators and—remarkably—is suggested as a way to teach geography through literature. One of the books’ attractions is a Fog Index of 6.9 and a Flesch Reading Index of 75.2—indications that 90 percent of similar children’s books are harder to read.
Holling was born in Jackson Co., Michigan, where his interest in nature guided him to a multi-faceted vocation: writer, illustrator, naturalist and historian. He was the son of Bennett and Lulah Clancy, and brother to Allen and Gwendaline.
He grew up roaming the southern Michigan woods and reading books about nature, Native Americans and camping that his mother brought him from the public library. “He began to draw at age three and knew by the time he was a teenager that he wanted to write and illustrate books for children like those he had so enjoyed in his earlier reading life,” according to Children's Literature Review (Deborah J. Morad, Editor. Detroit: Gale Research Company, Volume 50, 1999, pp. 44-48)
As a child, he enthusiastically explored the area’s meadows and woods with a thirst for knowledge. “At three,” it’s noted in Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults (2nd ed., Gale Group, 2002) “he was an avid artist, drawing very advanced pictures of horses, cows, and other animals. In his youth, his father once brought him a dead owl. The investigative boy became fascinated with it, making an Indian headdress from the feathers and a belt with the claws. His love of Indian customs and ways was a constant throughout his life.”
“I was mighty fortunate,” Holling is quoted in Major Authors. “When I was a small boy my father was superintendent of schools, so we always had books about. Besides, Mother got from the library in the small town nearby all the good books that could possibly interest me, about animals and Indians and about camping,” Holling said to M. Clyde Armstrong in a Horn Book interview. At that point in his life, the author knew he wanted to make a career of producing these kinds of books for children.
Attending the Chicago Art Institute, he worked primarily in black and white, receiving his diploma in 1923. It was there that he met his future wife, Lucille Webster. At some point in young adulthood, Holling worked as a grocery clerk, factory worker and sailor on a Great Lake ore boat.
After graduating, he spent a year studying in northern New Mexico. He became fascinated with the desert, making color an important feature of his art. Regionalist art in the early 1930s focused on reassuring images of the heartland, and this style may have amplified Holling’s optimism and spirit.
Returning to Chicago, he joined a taxidermy department of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He also worked under assistant curator and noted anthropologist Ralph Linton. He and Lucille were married in 1925 and the couple became art instructors on the first University World Cruise, sponsored by New York University in 1926-27. After this teaching stint, Holling worked as a freelance designer, advertising illustrator and illustrator for other authors.
His first books, both published in 1923, were Sun and Smoke; Verse and Woodcuts of New Mexico (apparently self-published) and New Mexico Made Easy with Words of Modern Syllables (R.F. Clancy & Co.). These were followed by a succession of books published by P.F. Volland: Little Big Bye-and-Bye, (1926), Roll Away Twins (1927), and Claws of the Thunderbird (1928). Moving to other publishers, he wrote and illustrated Choo-Me-Shoo the Eskimo * (Buzza & Co., 1928), Rocky Billy (Macmillan, 1928), Twins Who Flew Around the World (Platt & Munk, 1930), The Book of Cowboys * (Platt & Munk, 1932), The Book of Indians * (Platt & Munk, 1935), Rum-Tum-Tummy (Saalfield Publishing, 1936) and Little Buffalo Boy * (Garden City Publishing Co., 1939) that drew on naturalism—birds, geography, waterways, Native Americans—he became familiar with. (Titles marked with asterisks are also credited to Lucille Webster Holling.)
Additionally, he illustrated The Blot, Little City Cat, by Phyllis Crawford (1930); Children of Other Lands, by Watty Piper (a.k.a Little Folks of Other Lands, 1932); Kimo, the Whistling Boy, a Story of Hawaii, by Alice Cooper Bailey and illustrated also by Lucille Holling; The Road in Story Land *, edited by Watty Piper (1932); and The Magic Story Tree, a Favorite Collection of Fifteen Fairy Tales and Fables * (1964).
In his early period, Holling fully realized his calling. St. James Guide to Children's Writers, (5th ed. St. James Press) saw his evolution from The Book of Indians and The Book of Cowboys to “a group of singular books which offer blendings of rare elements.” He presented readers with “a unique vision of the country, each focusing first on the wild life Mr. Holling knew so well, but spreading wide into the works of men and the sweep of history.”
The ’40s ushered in his five classics from Houghton Mifflin: Paddle-to-the-Sea (1941), Tree in the Trail (1942), Seabird (1948), Minn of the Mississippi (1951), and Pagoo * (1957). In Tree, a cottonwood watches the pageant of history on the Santa Fe Trail for 200 years, Seabird follows a carved gull with four generations of travelers on ships and a plane, Minn is a turtle hatched in the Mississippi’s headwaters and carried to the Gulf of Mexico, and Pagoo studies life in a tidal pool through the story of a hermit crab.
Pagoo symbolized what Holling worked to achieve, his wanting young people to understand that growing up is difficult. In the Horn Book interview, he said he wanted to “make children aware of this concept…this urge in a minute living thing to change and search, somehow aware that his body is developing into the precise shape that will fit in a shell he will someday find.”
“What we teachers need is Holling’s insight into the relationship between narrative action and factual information,” Terry Borten advised in his analysis, “The Teaching of Paddle-to-the-Sea,” in Learning (January, 1977). “He comments on the energy, simplicity, understanding, and appeal in the story, and the allowance Holling makes for the feelings of children.”
The story lines of these books are well-complemented by their art. Of special interest are the sidebars that make a reader linger. They may be a detailed, hand-lettered pen and ink of a ship’s rigging in Seabird or the Great Lakes displayed “like bowls on a hillside” in Paddle-to-the-Sea. Learning new information was never more inviting and entertaining. Holling was a writer/illustrator who tapped into children’s secret consciousness and curiosity.
Such richness in storytelling and illustration still makes for classical favorites, which says much about this master of children’s literature. That Houghton-Mifflin continues to publish the works in its imprimatur with their original covers and at prices of between $10 and $14 suggests there are bargains to be had. For the inveterate collector, early editions are available at affordable prices.
Still, Holling’s life and work has been surrounded by a lack of acknowledgement. It’s difficult uncovering a published biography, and many references to Holling are little more than a general paragraph describing a few key points in his life. In fact, he was born Holling Allison Clancy in the eponymous Holling Corners, Mich., where his forebears had lived and farmed for generations. He legally changed his name in 1925. The fact that Holling Corners is—or was—in Henrietta Township was clarified for me by Evan J. Farmer, in the Reference Department of the Jackson (Mich.) District Library.
He may have been an autodidact, traveling and doing his own research as he prepared his books. After graduating the Chicago Art Institute, his New Mexico wanderjahr was revelatory. Armstrong infers, “Color, which had never impressed him, hit him here as a tremendous natural mystery, glamorized by the clear dust-free air of Taos.” This newfound love was to become an important feature in his later illustrations.
Major Authors and Illustrators reminds us that Holling’s personal life reflected his interests in the natural world. His avocations were canoeing, archery, hunting, camping and woodcraft.
He was also known as a talented storyteller who enjoyed hearing from his readers. He said in the Horn Book interview, “I receive letters that make me very happy, because I know the writers have understood what I try to say. Although the action part of my stories is fabricated, I have always tried to make the atmosphere surrounding them completely authentic.”
The scarcity of biographical details is intriguing. In his later years, he lived in Pasadena, California, according to Bruce Tabb, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Oregon Libraries. He and Lucille probably found a kindred spirit in their neighbor, illustrator Kay Nielsen who had immigrated from Denmark, according to the University of Pittsburgh libraries. (Nielsen’s designs were featured in the “Ave Maria” and “Night on Bald Mountain” sequences of Walt Disney’s film Fantasia.) Lucille Holling was herself a prolific illustrator of advertising, posters and prints, in addition to books. She worked in a similar optimistic, regionalist style.
Holling died in Pasadena after a long illness, was survived by Lucille, and is buried back home at Nims Cemetery in Henrietta Twsp. His manuscript drafts and book-related material are housed in the Special Collections and Archives at the University of Oregon in Eugene, while his publicity and correspondence are in the Special Collection at the University of California-Los Angeles. We can only hope one of America’s favorite authors will be the subject of a comprehensive analysis of his work. And be long revered by new generations of children young and old.
# # #
2/3/08 rev. 2/20/08, 3/15/08 © Walter Giersbach 2008
Paddle-to-the-Sea is available in Grinnell College's Curriculum Library: PS3515.O44x P3 1989
By Walter Giersbach '61
An obituary in 1978 stated that Holling Clancy Holling “was best known for his geo-historical-fiction volumes for children, believed that children’s literature should be both entertaining and instructive and therefore filled his adventuresome tales with well-researched historical and scientific data.” This terse summary in Twentieth Century Children's Writers (St. Martin's Press) hardly does justice to a giant of children’s literature.
Holling (Aug. 2, 1900-Sept. 7, 1973) introduced me to a world that was both familiar and exotic when I was a child. Paddle-to-the Sea magnified my homely toy boat-building and married it to the alien geography of Lake Nipigon in Canada. The adventure of an Indian boy’s canoe opened a vista of snowmelt turning into burbling stream before becoming the mighty St. Laurence that floated his model canoe to the ocean. Was there ever a child who didn’t wonder if someone might read his message in a bottle floated out to sea—and empathize with the Indian boy?
Six decades later, with time to sieve through memories, I sought to learn who this writer/illustrator was. Generations of young readers have been attracted to Holling’s stories as much for his watercolor illustrations that drew on the American Realist School of Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood as for his stories of mythic proportions. Paddle-to-the-Sea, a Caldecott Honor Book in 1941, so resonated with early readers that it has remained in print for 66 years. It is still recommended by educators and—remarkably—is suggested as a way to teach geography through literature. One of the books’ attractions is a Fog Index of 6.9 and a Flesch Reading Index of 75.2—indications that 90 percent of similar children’s books are harder to read.
Holling was born in Jackson Co., Michigan, where his interest in nature guided him to a multi-faceted vocation: writer, illustrator, naturalist and historian. He was the son of Bennett and Lulah Clancy, and brother to Allen and Gwendaline.
He grew up roaming the southern Michigan woods and reading books about nature, Native Americans and camping that his mother brought him from the public library. “He began to draw at age three and knew by the time he was a teenager that he wanted to write and illustrate books for children like those he had so enjoyed in his earlier reading life,” according to Children's Literature Review (Deborah J. Morad, Editor. Detroit: Gale Research Company, Volume 50, 1999, pp. 44-48)
As a child, he enthusiastically explored the area’s meadows and woods with a thirst for knowledge. “At three,” it’s noted in Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults (2nd ed., Gale Group, 2002) “he was an avid artist, drawing very advanced pictures of horses, cows, and other animals. In his youth, his father once brought him a dead owl. The investigative boy became fascinated with it, making an Indian headdress from the feathers and a belt with the claws. His love of Indian customs and ways was a constant throughout his life.”
“I was mighty fortunate,” Holling is quoted in Major Authors. “When I was a small boy my father was superintendent of schools, so we always had books about. Besides, Mother got from the library in the small town nearby all the good books that could possibly interest me, about animals and Indians and about camping,” Holling said to M. Clyde Armstrong in a Horn Book interview. At that point in his life, the author knew he wanted to make a career of producing these kinds of books for children.
Attending the Chicago Art Institute, he worked primarily in black and white, receiving his diploma in 1923. It was there that he met his future wife, Lucille Webster. At some point in young adulthood, Holling worked as a grocery clerk, factory worker and sailor on a Great Lake ore boat.
After graduating, he spent a year studying in northern New Mexico. He became fascinated with the desert, making color an important feature of his art. Regionalist art in the early 1930s focused on reassuring images of the heartland, and this style may have amplified Holling’s optimism and spirit.
Returning to Chicago, he joined a taxidermy department of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He also worked under assistant curator and noted anthropologist Ralph Linton. He and Lucille were married in 1925 and the couple became art instructors on the first University World Cruise, sponsored by New York University in 1926-27. After this teaching stint, Holling worked as a freelance designer, advertising illustrator and illustrator for other authors.
His first books, both published in 1923, were Sun and Smoke; Verse and Woodcuts of New Mexico (apparently self-published) and New Mexico Made Easy with Words of Modern Syllables (R.F. Clancy & Co.). These were followed by a succession of books published by P.F. Volland: Little Big Bye-and-Bye, (1926), Roll Away Twins (1927), and Claws of the Thunderbird (1928). Moving to other publishers, he wrote and illustrated Choo-Me-Shoo the Eskimo * (Buzza & Co., 1928), Rocky Billy (Macmillan, 1928), Twins Who Flew Around the World (Platt & Munk, 1930), The Book of Cowboys * (Platt & Munk, 1932), The Book of Indians * (Platt & Munk, 1935), Rum-Tum-Tummy (Saalfield Publishing, 1936) and Little Buffalo Boy * (Garden City Publishing Co., 1939) that drew on naturalism—birds, geography, waterways, Native Americans—he became familiar with. (Titles marked with asterisks are also credited to Lucille Webster Holling.)
Additionally, he illustrated The Blot, Little City Cat, by Phyllis Crawford (1930); Children of Other Lands, by Watty Piper (a.k.a Little Folks of Other Lands, 1932); Kimo, the Whistling Boy, a Story of Hawaii, by Alice Cooper Bailey and illustrated also by Lucille Holling; The Road in Story Land *, edited by Watty Piper (1932); and The Magic Story Tree, a Favorite Collection of Fifteen Fairy Tales and Fables * (1964).
In his early period, Holling fully realized his calling. St. James Guide to Children's Writers, (5th ed. St. James Press) saw his evolution from The Book of Indians and The Book of Cowboys to “a group of singular books which offer blendings of rare elements.” He presented readers with “a unique vision of the country, each focusing first on the wild life Mr. Holling knew so well, but spreading wide into the works of men and the sweep of history.”
The ’40s ushered in his five classics from Houghton Mifflin: Paddle-to-the-Sea (1941), Tree in the Trail (1942), Seabird (1948), Minn of the Mississippi (1951), and Pagoo * (1957). In Tree, a cottonwood watches the pageant of history on the Santa Fe Trail for 200 years, Seabird follows a carved gull with four generations of travelers on ships and a plane, Minn is a turtle hatched in the Mississippi’s headwaters and carried to the Gulf of Mexico, and Pagoo studies life in a tidal pool through the story of a hermit crab.
Pagoo symbolized what Holling worked to achieve, his wanting young people to understand that growing up is difficult. In the Horn Book interview, he said he wanted to “make children aware of this concept…this urge in a minute living thing to change and search, somehow aware that his body is developing into the precise shape that will fit in a shell he will someday find.”
“What we teachers need is Holling’s insight into the relationship between narrative action and factual information,” Terry Borten advised in his analysis, “The Teaching of Paddle-to-the-Sea,” in Learning (January, 1977). “He comments on the energy, simplicity, understanding, and appeal in the story, and the allowance Holling makes for the feelings of children.”
The story lines of these books are well-complemented by their art. Of special interest are the sidebars that make a reader linger. They may be a detailed, hand-lettered pen and ink of a ship’s rigging in Seabird or the Great Lakes displayed “like bowls on a hillside” in Paddle-to-the-Sea. Learning new information was never more inviting and entertaining. Holling was a writer/illustrator who tapped into children’s secret consciousness and curiosity.
Such richness in storytelling and illustration still makes for classical favorites, which says much about this master of children’s literature. That Houghton-Mifflin continues to publish the works in its imprimatur with their original covers and at prices of between $10 and $14 suggests there are bargains to be had. For the inveterate collector, early editions are available at affordable prices.
Still, Holling’s life and work has been surrounded by a lack of acknowledgement. It’s difficult uncovering a published biography, and many references to Holling are little more than a general paragraph describing a few key points in his life. In fact, he was born Holling Allison Clancy in the eponymous Holling Corners, Mich., where his forebears had lived and farmed for generations. He legally changed his name in 1925. The fact that Holling Corners is—or was—in Henrietta Township was clarified for me by Evan J. Farmer, in the Reference Department of the Jackson (Mich.) District Library.
He may have been an autodidact, traveling and doing his own research as he prepared his books. After graduating the Chicago Art Institute, his New Mexico wanderjahr was revelatory. Armstrong infers, “Color, which had never impressed him, hit him here as a tremendous natural mystery, glamorized by the clear dust-free air of Taos.” This newfound love was to become an important feature in his later illustrations.
Major Authors and Illustrators reminds us that Holling’s personal life reflected his interests in the natural world. His avocations were canoeing, archery, hunting, camping and woodcraft.
He was also known as a talented storyteller who enjoyed hearing from his readers. He said in the Horn Book interview, “I receive letters that make me very happy, because I know the writers have understood what I try to say. Although the action part of my stories is fabricated, I have always tried to make the atmosphere surrounding them completely authentic.”
The scarcity of biographical details is intriguing. In his later years, he lived in Pasadena, California, according to Bruce Tabb, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Oregon Libraries. He and Lucille probably found a kindred spirit in their neighbor, illustrator Kay Nielsen who had immigrated from Denmark, according to the University of Pittsburgh libraries. (Nielsen’s designs were featured in the “Ave Maria” and “Night on Bald Mountain” sequences of Walt Disney’s film Fantasia.) Lucille Holling was herself a prolific illustrator of advertising, posters and prints, in addition to books. She worked in a similar optimistic, regionalist style.
Holling died in Pasadena after a long illness, was survived by Lucille, and is buried back home at Nims Cemetery in Henrietta Twsp. His manuscript drafts and book-related material are housed in the Special Collections and Archives at the University of Oregon in Eugene, while his publicity and correspondence are in the Special Collection at the University of California-Los Angeles. We can only hope one of America’s favorite authors will be the subject of a comprehensive analysis of his work. And be long revered by new generations of children young and old.
# # #
2/3/08 rev. 2/20/08, 3/15/08 © Walter Giersbach 2008
Paddle-to-the-Sea is available in Grinnell College's Curriculum Library: PS3515.O44x P3 1989
Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle For Iraq
Patrick Cockburn. Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, The Shia Revival, and the Struggle For Iraq
New York: Scribner, 2008
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Patrick Cockburn is the Iraq correspondent for The Independent of London; his reporting does rely on being “embedded” with US or UK forces, i.e., he is not a government propagandist. His work on Muqtada al-Sadr follows his earlier work Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq in stressing the dire economic devastation that has occurred in Iraq after the Gulf War of 1991. The mass impoverishment of Iraq is the real story that is rarely mentioned in the corporate media's coverage of the colonial occupation.
The story of Shi'ism from the time of Imam Hussein and his warrior half brother Abbas being killed in battle at Karbala in 680 A.D., until the present day, resembles Irish history in that there are not many happy moments. Shi'ism was conceived in defeat and has not been politically dominant since before Saladin (a Sunni Kurd from Tikrit) who vanquished them in Egypt. Muqtada al-Sadr is the heir to this tradition of martyrdom and resistance. The progenitor of the Sadrist movement Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr (a.k.a. Sadr I), Muqtada's cousin, was killed by having nails driven into his forehead after watching his sister being raped and killed by henchmen of Saddam Hussein in 1980. His father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr (Sadr II), the organizational genius behind the Sadrist movement, was gunned down with Muqtada's two older brothers in 1999.
As the current leader of the Sadrist movement he is only nominally in charge of an organization that attracts zealous young men who are, at best, only loosely under his control. The Sadr movement has a social revolutionary aspect to it but fundamentally combines Iraqi nationalism with Shi'a religious identity in a way that the occupying US forces find troubling. There are at least great ironies in the US position. Firstly, like Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party, the Bush administration believes that to eliminate Muqtada al-Sadr will subdue the vexatious elements of Shi'ism. Secondly, the US is currently backing the central government [sic] of Nouri al-Maliki who embraces a pronounced separatist proclivity against the nationalism of Muqtada and the Mehdi army.
Cockburn's book is worth reading if for no other reason than the next time you see a dilettante (e.g. Chris Matthews) on television decrying the ignorance of one public official or another not knowing the difference between a Sunni and Shi'a Muslim you can appreciate just how shallow is commercially produced “expert” knowledge.
This book is on order for the Grinnell College Libraries
Other books by Patrick Cockburn:
Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein. NY: Harper Collins, 1999. Written with Alexander Cockburn. Burling Library DS79.75 .C63x 1999
Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq. New York: Verso, 2007 (on order for the library)
New York: Scribner, 2008
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Patrick Cockburn is the Iraq correspondent for The Independent of London; his reporting does rely on being “embedded” with US or UK forces, i.e., he is not a government propagandist. His work on Muqtada al-Sadr follows his earlier work Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq in stressing the dire economic devastation that has occurred in Iraq after the Gulf War of 1991. The mass impoverishment of Iraq is the real story that is rarely mentioned in the corporate media's coverage of the colonial occupation.
The story of Shi'ism from the time of Imam Hussein and his warrior half brother Abbas being killed in battle at Karbala in 680 A.D., until the present day, resembles Irish history in that there are not many happy moments. Shi'ism was conceived in defeat and has not been politically dominant since before Saladin (a Sunni Kurd from Tikrit) who vanquished them in Egypt. Muqtada al-Sadr is the heir to this tradition of martyrdom and resistance. The progenitor of the Sadrist movement Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr (a.k.a. Sadr I), Muqtada's cousin, was killed by having nails driven into his forehead after watching his sister being raped and killed by henchmen of Saddam Hussein in 1980. His father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr (Sadr II), the organizational genius behind the Sadrist movement, was gunned down with Muqtada's two older brothers in 1999.
As the current leader of the Sadrist movement he is only nominally in charge of an organization that attracts zealous young men who are, at best, only loosely under his control. The Sadr movement has a social revolutionary aspect to it but fundamentally combines Iraqi nationalism with Shi'a religious identity in a way that the occupying US forces find troubling. There are at least great ironies in the US position. Firstly, like Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party, the Bush administration believes that to eliminate Muqtada al-Sadr will subdue the vexatious elements of Shi'ism. Secondly, the US is currently backing the central government [sic] of Nouri al-Maliki who embraces a pronounced separatist proclivity against the nationalism of Muqtada and the Mehdi army.
Cockburn's book is worth reading if for no other reason than the next time you see a dilettante (e.g. Chris Matthews) on television decrying the ignorance of one public official or another not knowing the difference between a Sunni and Shi'a Muslim you can appreciate just how shallow is commercially produced “expert” knowledge.
This book is on order for the Grinnell College Libraries
Other books by Patrick Cockburn:
Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein. NY: Harper Collins, 1999. Written with Alexander Cockburn. Burling Library DS79.75 .C63x 1999
Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq. New York: Verso, 2007 (on order for the library)
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Carrie Lynch writes:
I thought you might be interested in Lifetime’s new movie, “Memory Keeper's Daughter, which is based on The New York Times best-selling novel by Kim Edwards. It stars Dermot Mulroney ("The Wedding Date"), Gretchen Mol ("3:10 to Yuma") and two-time Oscar nominee Emily Watson ("Angela's Ashes").
"After a doctor secretly plans to banish one of his twins for being afflicted with Down Syndrome, an attending nurse discovers his plan and intervenes, putting into motion events that will haunt the doctor, his wife and his son for the next 20 years."
For more information about the movie and cast, plus exclusive interviews
and videos, check this out:
For a limited time, you can check out the first chapter now:
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143037149,00.html?sym=EXC
Edwards, Kim. The Memory Keeper's Daughter. NY: Penguin, 2006.
Available at Stewart Library. LP Fiction EDWARDS and Fiction K EDWARDS
This book was also recommended by Heather Parker on January 17, 2008
I thought you might be interested in Lifetime’s new movie, “Memory Keeper's Daughter, which is based on The New York Times best-selling novel by Kim Edwards. It stars Dermot Mulroney ("The Wedding Date"), Gretchen Mol ("3:10 to Yuma") and two-time Oscar nominee Emily Watson ("Angela's Ashes").
"After a doctor secretly plans to banish one of his twins for being afflicted with Down Syndrome, an attending nurse discovers his plan and intervenes, putting into motion events that will haunt the doctor, his wife and his son for the next 20 years."
For more information about the movie and cast, plus exclusive interviews
and videos, check this out:
For a limited time, you can check out the first chapter now:
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143037149,00.html?sym=EXC
Edwards, Kim. The Memory Keeper's Daughter. NY: Penguin, 2006.
Available at Stewart Library. LP Fiction EDWARDS and Fiction K EDWARDS
This book was also recommended by Heather Parker on January 17, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Blogging about Blogs: A selection of books on the blogging revolution
Added by Matthew Horowitz '10
Blogs, Youtube, and Wikipedia are certainly captivating today’s younger generations and transforming the very fabric of American cultural achievement to date, but what are the implications of this new participatory Web revolution? In The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture, Silicon Valley guru Andrew Keen takes up this very question. He offers a critical, yet compelling denunciation of today’s Internet as a dangerous forum for the proliferation of an amateur and undermining culture. He argues that this “cult” threatens to devour our most valued cultural institutions such as magazines, music, movies, and even newspapers. Beware. Your perception of our generation’s favorite pastime might never be the same.
Andrew Keen. The Cult of the Amateur: how today's internet is killing our culture. Doubleday/Currency. 2007. Burling 2nd Floor. HM851.K44 2007
In Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web, Sarah Boxer, the original Web critic for The New York Times, presents an entertaining anthology of some of the Web's most vibrant blogs. The book features a diverse array of the very best posts from blogs including Becker-Posner, a chillingly clear blog written by a Nobel laureate in economics (Becker) and a U.S. Court of Appeals judge (Posner) about hot-button issues such as immigration and global warming, and Micrographica, an online cartoon blog starring a piece of crap and a rodent. Think of Ultimate Blogs as the product of many many hours of searching the Web in hope of finding that interesting tid-bit that will brighten your day.
Sarah Boxer. Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web. Vintage Books. 2008.
Burling 1st Floor. AC5.U45 2008
In Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture David Kline and Dan Burstein take an energetic look at the rapid emergence of the Internet blogosphere. Through a series of interviews, they take you into the minds of the world's newest, yet suddenly powerful elite: influential bloggers. Included are people like Joe Trippi, former National Campaign Manager for Howard Dean, whose use of blogs as fund-raising tools and grassroots organizers has revolutionized politics. Although Kline and Burstein acknowledge blogs as the new growth industry on the Web, they argue that they have their limits. The newest vehicle for the voiceless in politics, business, and culture is seemingly destined to fall short of the glorified hyperbole currently surrounding its name.
David Kline and Dan Burstein. Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture. CDS Books. 2005. Science Library. TK5105.8884.K55x 2005
Blogs are the newest medium for political expression and are quickly proliferating around the World Wide Web, but how will they impact our democracy? This is the focus of David D. Perlmutter's book entitled Blogwars. Perlmutter argues that blogs like DailyKos, The Huffington Post, Powerlineblog, Instapundit, and Talking Points Memo are becoming an essential part of our political dialog that professionals simply can no longer ignore. By providing a diversity of opinions and a space for lesser voices, blogs offer a great venue for deepening our democracy. As blogs are increasingly replacing traditional news mediums as a source of information, Perlmutter offers an important examination of this often controversial, new cultural phenomenon.
David D. Perlmutter. Blogwars. Oxford University Press. 2008.
Burling 2nd Floor. JA85.2.U6 P45 2008
In We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age, Scott Gant takes a look at how bloggers are recasting the mold of journalism.
Scott Gant. We're All Journalist Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age. Free Press. 2007. Burling 2nd Floor. KF2750. G36 2007.
Blogs, Youtube, and Wikipedia are certainly captivating today’s younger generations and transforming the very fabric of American cultural achievement to date, but what are the implications of this new participatory Web revolution? In The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture, Silicon Valley guru Andrew Keen takes up this very question. He offers a critical, yet compelling denunciation of today’s Internet as a dangerous forum for the proliferation of an amateur and undermining culture. He argues that this “cult” threatens to devour our most valued cultural institutions such as magazines, music, movies, and even newspapers. Beware. Your perception of our generation’s favorite pastime might never be the same.
Andrew Keen. The Cult of the Amateur: how today's internet is killing our culture. Doubleday/Currency. 2007. Burling 2nd Floor. HM851.K44 2007
In Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web, Sarah Boxer, the original Web critic for The New York Times, presents an entertaining anthology of some of the Web's most vibrant blogs. The book features a diverse array of the very best posts from blogs including Becker-Posner, a chillingly clear blog written by a Nobel laureate in economics (Becker) and a U.S. Court of Appeals judge (Posner) about hot-button issues such as immigration and global warming, and Micrographica, an online cartoon blog starring a piece of crap and a rodent. Think of Ultimate Blogs as the product of many many hours of searching the Web in hope of finding that interesting tid-bit that will brighten your day.
Sarah Boxer. Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web. Vintage Books. 2008.
Burling 1st Floor. AC5.U45 2008
In BLOG: Understanding the Information Reformation that’s Changing Your World, Hugh Hewitt offers up the unofficial history of the blogging movement. With literally millions of blogs regularly being visited on the Web, the blogosphere represents a new and fast moving information highway. BLOG is an essential road map to this highway so you don’t get lost or left behind.
Hugh Hewitt. BLOG: Understanding the Information Reformation that's Changing Your World. T. Nelson Publishers. 2005. Science Library. TK5105.8884.H48 2005In Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture David Kline and Dan Burstein take an energetic look at the rapid emergence of the Internet blogosphere. Through a series of interviews, they take you into the minds of the world's newest, yet suddenly powerful elite: influential bloggers. Included are people like Joe Trippi, former National Campaign Manager for Howard Dean, whose use of blogs as fund-raising tools and grassroots organizers has revolutionized politics. Although Kline and Burstein acknowledge blogs as the new growth industry on the Web, they argue that they have their limits. The newest vehicle for the voiceless in politics, business, and culture is seemingly destined to fall short of the glorified hyperbole currently surrounding its name.
David Kline and Dan Burstein. Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture. CDS Books. 2005. Science Library. TK5105.8884.K55x 2005
Blogs are the newest medium for political expression and are quickly proliferating around the World Wide Web, but how will they impact our democracy? This is the focus of David D. Perlmutter's book entitled Blogwars. Perlmutter argues that blogs like DailyKos, The Huffington Post, Powerlineblog, Instapundit, and Talking Points Memo are becoming an essential part of our political dialog that professionals simply can no longer ignore. By providing a diversity of opinions and a space for lesser voices, blogs offer a great venue for deepening our democracy. As blogs are increasingly replacing traditional news mediums as a source of information, Perlmutter offers an important examination of this often controversial, new cultural phenomenon.
David D. Perlmutter. Blogwars. Oxford University Press. 2008.
Burling 2nd Floor. JA85.2.U6 P45 2008
In We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age, Scott Gant takes a look at how bloggers are recasting the mold of journalism.
Scott Gant. We're All Journalist Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age. Free Press. 2007. Burling 2nd Floor. KF2750. G36 2007.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Toqueville's Democracy in America
Alexis de Toqueville. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve. New York: Knopf, 1994 [1835 & 1840] )
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Originally published in two volumes, Toqueville's Democracy in America was based on the French nobleman's observations of his travels throughout the United States in the early 1830s. Toqueville, while a conservative, is somewhat unique in that he clearly acknowledges the importance of social classes in society. Despite this insight into modern politics and society, Toqueville was very much on the opposite side of the barricades in 1848 from the European revolutionaries.
Toqueville posited that the American democratic republic maintained itself largely for three reasons. American uniqueness, the laws, and the manners and customs practiced by the Americans were responsible for the success of the United States a little more than half a century after the American revolution. At the time of his writing, the historical track record of democracies did not lend itself to a belief that the long-term viability of the American republic was a certainty. In fact, Toqueville believed that with a population of 100 million in the near future of the United States “the continuation of the Federal government can be only an accident.”
In his role as Cassandra he saw a United States of 150 million ruling the seas in the same way that the Roman empire had once ruled the world. This together with his prophetic musings that it was the United States and Russia that would one day be the two hegemonic powers in the world are cited as examples of his insight into the future. It should be noted that he was wrong clearly more than he was right in his historical prognostications. For example, he averred that if the “Negroes of the South” were granted their freedom they would “before long abuse it.” Further, he posited that attempting to make the sexes equal could only result in “weak men and disorderly women.”
Like others of his epoch, and beyond, Toqueville feared that one of the great obstacles to a stable democracy was preventing the tyranny of the majority. Despite all evidence to the contrary the bogeyman of an envious majority conniving to separate the wealthy minority from their property seems to be ubiquitous in the conservative reading of history. Ever the specter of “class warfare” looms on the horizon.
Despite these and other shortcomings Democracy in America is worth reading for Toqueville's insights into the American character. Although Toqueville was kinder than Charles Dickens was in writing of his visit to America, he was still critical when provoked. The Americans were a serious bunch who “appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of praise.” This sobriety could verge, in Toqueville's view, on the boorish. “It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it.”
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Originally published in two volumes, Toqueville's Democracy in America was based on the French nobleman's observations of his travels throughout the United States in the early 1830s. Toqueville, while a conservative, is somewhat unique in that he clearly acknowledges the importance of social classes in society. Despite this insight into modern politics and society, Toqueville was very much on the opposite side of the barricades in 1848 from the European revolutionaries.
Toqueville posited that the American democratic republic maintained itself largely for three reasons. American uniqueness, the laws, and the manners and customs practiced by the Americans were responsible for the success of the United States a little more than half a century after the American revolution. At the time of his writing, the historical track record of democracies did not lend itself to a belief that the long-term viability of the American republic was a certainty. In fact, Toqueville believed that with a population of 100 million in the near future of the United States “the continuation of the Federal government can be only an accident.”
In his role as Cassandra he saw a United States of 150 million ruling the seas in the same way that the Roman empire had once ruled the world. This together with his prophetic musings that it was the United States and Russia that would one day be the two hegemonic powers in the world are cited as examples of his insight into the future. It should be noted that he was wrong clearly more than he was right in his historical prognostications. For example, he averred that if the “Negroes of the South” were granted their freedom they would “before long abuse it.” Further, he posited that attempting to make the sexes equal could only result in “weak men and disorderly women.”
Like others of his epoch, and beyond, Toqueville feared that one of the great obstacles to a stable democracy was preventing the tyranny of the majority. Despite all evidence to the contrary the bogeyman of an envious majority conniving to separate the wealthy minority from their property seems to be ubiquitous in the conservative reading of history. Ever the specter of “class warfare” looms on the horizon.
Despite these and other shortcomings Democracy in America is worth reading for Toqueville's insights into the American character. Although Toqueville was kinder than Charles Dickens was in writing of his visit to America, he was still critical when provoked. The Americans were a serious bunch who “appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of praise.” This sobriety could verge, in Toqueville's view, on the boorish. “It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it.”
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