Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Review: The Second Child

The Second Child
Deborah Garrison
cover
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Nine years after the stunning debut of her critically acclaimed poetry collection A Working Girl Can’t Win, which chronicled the progress and predicaments of a young woman, Deborah Garrison now moves into another stage of adulthood–starting a family and saying good-bye to a more carefree self.

In The Second Child, Garrison explores every facet of motherhood–the ambivalence, the trepidation, and the joy (“Sharp bliss in proximity to the roundness, / The globe already set aspin, particular / Of a whole new life”)– and comes to terms with the seismic shift in her outlook and in the world around her. She lays out her post-9/11 fears as she commutes daily to the city, continues to seek passion in her marriage, and wrestles with her feelings about faith and the mysterious gift of happiness.

Sometimes sensual, sometimes succinct, always candid, The Second Child is a meditation on the extraordinariness resident in the everyday–nursing babies, missing the past, knowing when to lead a child and knowing when to let go. With a voice sound and wise, Garrison examines a life fully lived.
Review:
"With its accessible wit, and its clear, unpretentious depictions of young Manhattanites' worries and joys, Garrison's 1998 debut, A Working Girl Can't Win, won rare attention. The poetry editor at Knopf, Garrison resides in northern New Jersey with three young children: these poems chronicle her new, decidedly family-centered life, with the same offhand charm. Writing of infants, she speaks as a mother to mothers, understanding both love and fatigue: 'Have you/ ever been in the shuttered room/ where life is milk? Where you make/ milk?' As her children grow up (and grow in number), Garrison's poetry follows them: 'No time for a sestina for the working mother/ Who has so much to do.' Other recurring topics appear through the lens of motherhood. September 11 gave her a 'powerful and inarticulate' wish 'to be pregnant'; charming amorous poems depict her continuing ties to her husband, the father of her children, and a bus ride through the Lincoln Tunnel reminds her that 'life is good,/ despite everything.' While many of Garrison's poems may not surprise, they may provoke shocks of recognition in many readers — parents, in particular — who should find both her topics and her tones reassuringly familiar." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Synopsis:
From the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of "A Working Girl Can't Win" comes an energetic, passionate, accessible, and even more accomplished collection of poetry about the joys and fears of motherhood and family life.
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About the Author
Deborah Garrison is the author of A Working Girl Can’t Win: and Other Poems. For fifteen years, she worked on the editorial staff of The New Yorker and is now the poetry editor af Alfred A. Knopf and a senior editor at Pantheon Books. She lives with her husband and three children in Montclair, New Jersey.
-Powell's Books

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Review: Lost Season One




We humans love a good mystery. I'm learning about the Elucinian Mysteries in Classical Mythology right now, and before the Greeks there were mystery cults. Not a lot has changed in the intervening years.

That said, Lost is a mystery wrapped up in an enigma and told as a riddle. And one of the best television shows I've ever seen to boot. Taken at face value, it is the tale of Oceanic Flight #815, which inexplicably crashed more than 1,000 miles off course en route to Los Angeles from Sydney.

The survivors of a plane crash are forced to live with each other on a remote island, a dangerous new world that poses unique threats of its own
What really happened? Why, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42, of course. Each episode features a cleverly integrated parallel narrative: events on the Island juxtaposed with the backstory of one of the survivors. Suffice to say that the two stories are always related, implying that more than coincidence is at work...

Reviewing the substance of Lost is tricky because there isn't much a person can say without spoiling anything. So I'll be a little more general: Basically, the biggest disrespect you could do to the story is call it "Survivor with a script." Lost is nothing like Survivor--instead, it's a compelling, character-driven drama enriched with elements of science fiction.

High praise needs to be given to more than just the writing, though. I've never seen a show better cast or acted. In terms of location, Oahu perfectly encapsulates the "godforsaken paradise" feel the creators were undoubtedly going for. And I can't praise the score highly enough. I'm frightened every time I hear the opening theme (well, more of a sound effect, really), so closely does it musically approximate a sense of imminent and predestined doom.

Hype usually has the nasty effect of raising your expectations so high that the only place to go is down. Trust me when I tell you that you won't feel that way when you're watching. Blogcritics.org

Overview
Creators:
Jeffrey Lieber
J.J. Abrams
Damon Lindelof

Release Date:
22 September 2004 (USA)
Genre:
Adventure / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Tagline:
Everything Happens for a Reason
-IMDB

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Review Excerpt: Once Upon A Country

from read.litpundit.com* Author: Sari Nusseibeh
* Pages: 560
* Price: $27.50
* Publication Date: 2007-03-29
* Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux


Over at New York Times, Leon Wieseltier reviews Sari Nusseibeh's Once Upon a Country.

“Once Upon a Country” is a deeply admirable book by a deeply admirable man. It is largely a political memoir, about a reluctantly political Palestinian trying to bring politics to his people, as the forces of occupation, religion and terrorism interfere with the very possibility of politics. Nusseibeh’s book is written out of a refreshingly candid awareness that the reasons for the persistence of the Palestinians in their stateless misery are multiple and complicated. He is the very rare participant in the Israeli-Palestinian disputation who does not spend himself in fits of self-justification; the rights and the wrongs, in his view, are cruelly distributed across all the sides in this apparently ceaseless conflict.

-Excerpt found at read.LitPundit.com

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Shortbus



MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Jay Brannan, Justin Bond, Lindsay Beamish, Paul Dawson, Peter Stickles, PJ DeBoy, Raphael Barker, Sook-Yin Lee, Jasper James, Paul Stovall, Scott Matthew, Bitch, Daniela Sea, Shanti Carson, Adam Hardman, and Bradford Scobie

John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic and tragic intersections between love and sex in and around a modern-day underground salon. The characters converge on a weekly gathering called Shortbus: a mad nexus of art, music, politics and polysexual carnality. Set in a post-9/11, Bush-exhausted New York City, Shortbus tells its story with sexual frankness, suggesting new ways to reconcile questions of the mind, pleasures of the flesh and imperatives of the heart. (ThinkFilm)

GENRE(S): Drama
WRITTEN BY: John Cameron Mitchell
DIRECTED BY: John Cameron Mitchell
RELEASE DATE: DVD: March 13, 2007
Theatrical: October 4, 2006
RUNNING TIME: 101 minutes, Color
ORIGIN: USA

-Metacritic.com
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Review: Elvis relgion : the cult of the King / Gregory L. Reece




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Review: Singing Hands / Delia Ray

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Review: The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

An authoritative yet accessible presentation of the scientific evidence that climate change is happening; a clear delineation of what global warming has done and could do to life on our planet; and an urgent call for action. According to environmentalist and naturalist Flannery (The Eternal Frontier, 2001, etc.), human beings are the weather makers, and while there is still time to reduce the impact of global warming, failure of this generation to do so will lead to a climate-change-driven Dark Ages and the collapse of civilization. For the non-specialist, he deftly untangles the meanings of "greenhouse effect," "global warming" and "climate change" as he explains their connections and illustrates the importance of the atmosphere to earth's well-being. The present age, sometimes called the Anthropocene, or age of humanity, which began some 8,000 years ago, is, according to Flannery, showing signs of turning ugly. He documents the ecological changes that have already taken place in polar regions and on coral reefs, the species extinctions, altered rainfall patterns, rising sea levels and extreme weather events-all from temperature rises of only 0.63 of a degree, one-fifth to one-tenth of what is expected in this century. Turning to the political sphere, he examines the Montreal Protocol, which reduced emissions of CFCs, and the Kyoto Protocol, which attempts to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions but was not ratified by the United States or Australia. He looks at the role of government, scrutinizes the relationship between government and industry and charges that the fossil-fuel industry willfully misrepresents the dangers of climate change. Finally, Flannery discussesvarious power technologies-wind and solar, nuclear and hydrogen-that would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, and he conjectures about what their economic and social impact might be. His closing chapter spells out specific steps that individuals can take to substantially reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. A powerful and persuasive book, sure to provoke strong reaction.

--Kirkus Reviews

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Review: American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau

This beguiling book is Cheever's exploration of the extraordinary cross-fertilization of creativity in Concord, Mass., during the mid-19th century, when Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and the Alcotts lived as neighbors there. If it won't offer much new information for serious students of American literature, it does provide a lively and insightful introduction to the personalities and achievements of the men and women who were seminal figures in America's literary renaissance, and who, Cheever theorizes, influenced the social activism of succeeding generations. In episodic chapters, Cheever describes their entwined relationships. Margaret Fuller was their brilliant, free-spirited muse and a model for Hester Prynne. Louisa May Alcott, was forced to support her family because her feckless father, Bronson, had no intention of doing so. Herman Melville briefly entered the enchanted circle through his friendship with Hawthorne. Cheever touches on their love affairs and intellectual platonic attractions, their high-minded idealism, their personal losses, their intermittent misunderstandings and jealousies, the years of penury suffered by all except Emerson and their full-fledged tragedies-such as Margaret Fuller's drowning. While Cheever sometimes indulges in high-flown speculation about their personal lives, she keenly analyzes the positive and negative ways they influenced one another's ideas and beliefs and the literature that came out of "this sudden outbreak of genius."

--Publishers Weekly

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Review: Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present

American involvement in Middle Eastern affairs is hardly new-and, writes historian Oren (Six Days of War, 2001, etc.), mostly "graced with good intentions."The Middle East-a term, Oren notes, coined by an American admiral a century ago-was a subject of intense interest across the waters in the early days of the Republic, thanks in good measure to the work of Mediterranean privateers who pressed American sailors into slavery. Add to that the natural strangeness of the Arab world, and, writes Oren, for Thomas Jefferson the region was "a bastion of infidel-hating pirates as well as a realm of exotic wonders." Thus it would remain, at least until the piracy problem was attended to. The slavery problem was another matter, and Oren takes up a rewarding theme by examining the uses to which it was put in American abolitionist circles. In decades to come, fast ships would carry Americans across the sea in great numbers. Some made the heart of the Middle East part of the Grand Tour, some made the Holy Land an object of pilgrimage and its inhabitants one of proselytism; and some saw in the region a source of commerce and wealth, even before the discovery of oil. Interestingly, as Oren explores in detail, many travelers of all stripes tended to be anti-imperialist, regarding British designs on the region as a problem, even if Harper's magazine did opine that "Civilization gains whenever any misgoverned country passes under the control of a European race." That proto-neoconservative declaration is one of many parallels that the reader can reasonably draw between then and now. Oren suggests that much American activity in the Middle East, from Red Cross founder Clara Barton's intercession on behalf ofbesieged Armenians to the work of hydrologists and agronomists in making Palestine fertile ground, was benign. When it was not, it had unpleasant consequences, as with the machinations of one anti-Semitic ambassador and the present messy stage of what Oren calls the "thirty years war" following the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. Of considerable interest in that difficult time: well argued, and full of telling moments.

--Kirkus Reviews

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Review: Marie Antoinette: The Journey

Was she a sexual predator, political meddler, wastrel, and traitor? Or was she a scapegoat for a corrupt and bankrupt nation, who went with superb dignity to the guillotine, the victim of a vindictive judicial murder? The tragic life of Marie Antoinette, rich in conflicting detail, remains a biographer's challenge, and Antonia Fraser's richly human yet evenhanded account is a reader's delight.

In 1770, Marie Antoinette, aged 14, wed the awkward 16-year-old who in 1774 became Louis XVI. The marriage was intended to strengthen the Austrian-French alliance and produce sons to continue it. Marie Antoinette was of little use in the first endeavor; she lacked political power. Louis was of only occasional help in the second; he suffered from phimosis, an inhibiting physical condition. While the pair wandered through their doomed lives, fury built up in bankrupt France, exploding in the ferocity of the Revolution.

Everybody criticized Marie, who was known both as l'Autrichienne (the Austrian woman) and l'autruche chienne (the ostrich bitch). She was regarded as extravagant ("Madame Deficit"), pro-Austrian, and childless for too long. But, as Fraser demonstrates, Versailles demanded extravagance, and in politics Marie Antoinette was more pawn than player, pushed by wily Austrian diplomats and blocked by shrewd French ministers.

Fraser draws upon a huge range of sources to present a dazzling cast. Mozart, Gluck, Jefferson, Paine, Franklin and numerous others cross her pages. Fersen, the queen's discreet, devoted Swedish lover, looms large. The author succeeds brilliantly in describing how the once-vibrant Marie and the decent, despised, and irresolute Louis transformed themselves as the Revolution took its murderous course. Love of family gave them courage; love of France gave them nobility.

The horrific fate of Marie Antoinette, physically abused by the canaille, viciously libeled by the blood-soaked false prophets of liberty who condemned her, reminds the reader of just how thin the veneer of civilization is -- and how often revolutionaries are worse than those they condemn. Excellent illustrations and an extensive bibliography add to Fraser's fine book.

--Peter Skinner, Barnes & Noble Reviews

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Monday, April 9, 2007

Review: Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal



In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser looks at the American obsession with quick, cheap food. His lacerating portrayal of the McDonaldization of the food industry covers such topics as the meatpacking business, the plight of fast-food workers, the effect of fast food on the American diet, the flavoring secrets behind fast food, and the government's role in all of this. Start by asking your group when they think they'll next eat a hamburger and fries! (For a follow-up meeting, the group might want to read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906, and begin the discussion with a "compare and contrast" question.)


Ninety percent of all American children, and a growing number in other lands, partake of a meal at McDonald's each month. The implications for American and international eating habits, health, agriculture, land use, environment, worker safety, and other aspects of the fast food industry are carefully detailed. Suggestions for action by concerned consumers to oversee this vast industry are discussed. Reading this will make the next trip to McDonald's a more difficult choice.


--This review came from Library Journal & Library Journal; 1/15/2004, Vol. 129 Issue 1, p192-192, 1p, 2c
School Library Journal; Apr2006, Vol. 52 Issue 4, p68-68, 1/9p, 1c

This book would be of interest to anyone studying health issues as well as enviornmental affairs or social concerns.

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Review: Harlem speaks : a living history of the Harlem Renaissance

For three decades after World War I, Harlem was the site of burgeoning racial and cultural awareness and ambitions among African Americans. In the opening section of Harlem Speaks, the author, Cary D. Wintz, provides the historical context for what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. In separate sections devoted to poetry, music, politics, art, and the phenomenon of the New Negro, contributors profile many of the era's major figures, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, A. Phillip Randolph, and Marcus Garvey. The essays place the Harlem Renaissance in the broader context of an awakening of black culture throughout the U.S. The book contains references to the accompanying CD, which offers 60 minutes of music, poetry, interviews, performances, and speeches, giving voice to the vibrant life of Harlem. Photographs, drawings, book covers, and posters add to the richness of this collection. A fabulous resource on the Harlem Renaissance.

This primary-source material adds powerful and immediate impact and creates the “Living History” of the subtitle. Black-and-white photos, most from the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, are well captioned and informative. The visual and auditory impact of this title, paired with an in-depth, accessible text, makes it a good choice for browsing or research.

--This review came from Booklist 2/1/2007, Vol. 103 Issue 11, p28, 1p &
School Library Journal; Nov2006, Vol. 52 Issue 11, p165-165, 1/5p

This is an excellent resource for anyone studying the Harlem Renaissance African American or American culture.


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Review: Australian Literature: An Anthology of Writing from the Land Down Under

Australian Literature: An Anthology of Writing from the Land Down Under,' edited by Phyllis Fahrie Edelson is a great resource for those interested in Australian literature. Stylistically accomplished, provocative, and rich with possibilities, the contents of this anthology teach beautifully on the college. The anthology also includes excellent supplementary materials such as a map of Australia, a very valuable introductory survey of Australian history and literature, summary introductions to each section, brief biographies of the anthologized writers, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary of names and colloquialisms which might be unfamiliar to North Americans.

Part 1, "The Idea of the Bush," explores the complex ambivalence Australians direct toward that vast "outback" portion of their country which seems at once to define, beckon, challenge, menace, and exclude them. Part 2, "Images of Australia," is subdivided into sections titled "The Aboriginal Experience," "The Convict," and "The Search for a National Identity." This tripartite arrangement allows attention to otherness of all sorts, from skin color to caste to national or territorial affiliation, and to the difference this otherness makes to its perceiver. The lover as other, but also as a version of oneself, is the central concern of part 3, "Relationships," a section which offers conclusive evidence of the universality of this human search for love and connection, whether conducted under the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross.
With the exception of Thomas Keneally and perhaps Miles Franklin, the anthology represents all the fiction writers such a collection would be expected to acknowledge: Patrick White, Henry Lawson, Henry Handel Richardson, Christina Stead, Colin Johnson (now Mudrooroo Narogin), Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley, Randolph Stow, David Malouf, and Peter Carey. Also included are works by twelve other fiction writers, as well as biography/autobiography from Sally Morgan and A. B. Facey. The texts span the period 1870-1989, although about half are from contemporary writers. Short stories and excerpts from novels predominate; there is no drama or poetry. This omission might strike a prospective teacher of an Australian literature survey as a liability. However, collections of Australian poetry are easier to come by in North America than are prose anthologies, especially those not limited to short fiction, directed to a particular readership, or meant for readers already familiar with the Australian literary tradition. Scripts of Australian plays are also becoming more readily available in the Northern Hemisphere.

This review is an excerpt from World Literature Today; Summer93, Vol. 67 Issue 3, p665, 2p

This is an excellent resource for those studying or intersted in Cultural Studies & World Literature.

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Review: Nickel and dimed : on (not) getting by in America

Nickel & Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich provides a firsthand account at our nation's low-wage earners. The book began as an assignment for Harper's magazine to explore how millions of Americans were able to survive on minimum wages. "How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?" Ehrenreich asks. "How... were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to make it on $6 or $7 an hour?" To find out, Ehrenreich spent several months traveling from Maine to Minnesota to Florida, working a variety of low-paying gigs. She worked as a waitress, a motel housekeeper, a cleaning service worker, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart retail clerk. Although her weekly take-home pay was only slightly more than $300 (the result of often working two jobs a week), she scrupulously avoided tapping into her credit cards and bank account. Along the way, Ehrenreich was always mindful of her advantages: she was, after all, a privileged (with a Ph.D., a substantial career, and money in the bank) Alice who was just passing through this Much-Less-Than-Wonderland. As an honest writer, Ehrenreich also confronts her middle-class, feminist, and liberal biases and acknowledges that those principles may be luxuries in a world where regular meals, a secure place to live, and the money for a doctor's visit or a medical prescription are never guaranteed. Ehrenreich is a terrific storyteller who writes with a muckraker's heat. But she never allows her passion to turn these real-life experiences or the people whom she encounters into wooden object lessons.

--This review came from School Library Journal Dec2001, Vol. 47 Issue 12, p57, 1/3p


This book would be of interest to those studying Public Affairs and Human/Social Services as well as anyone interested in human or social concerns.


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Sunday, April 8, 2007

Review : Cult and Ritual Abuse : Its History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America / James Randall Noblitt



“This provocative book should be read by all who work in the area. This book provides the reader with a rigorous and interesting account of a contentious issue.” --Contemporary Psychology

“...anyone who is interested in the topic of cult and ritual abuse will find this book worth the time to read.” --Psychiatric Services

--Taken from Amazon.com

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Review : "This is the Zodiac Speaking" : Into the Mind of a Serial Killer / Michael D. Kelleher



"Recommended for those interested in old unsolved mysteries, this book tells the story of the Zodiac serial killer, whose crimes were committed in California in 1968 and 1969. The authors attempt to provide insight into the mind of the killer using information from reconstructed crime scenes, letters allegedly written by the murderer, and newspaper and law enforcement records. This is a new collaboration between the authors: Kelleher has written several books on the subject of violence and Van Nuys is a clinical psychologist and professor (psychology, Sonoma State Univ.), author of a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and president of a market research consulting firm. The book includes commentaries written by Van Nuys after reading and analyzing a series of letters allegedly written by the killer. Van Nuys suggests that the Zodiac had suffered from some sort of childhood loss or trauma. The authors conclude that, in addition to being a psychopath, the Zodiac represents a case of multiple-personality disorder and that he was "a decidedly horrible man, whose view of others was based on a complete absence of understanding, empathy, or love in his own heart." -- Choice

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Review : Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton's Little John? : Music's Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed / Gavin Edwards



"The landscape of modern music is a strange place," writes Edwards in his introduction. However, Edwards' myth-debunking volume gives the impression that it's not as strange as some think. Chapters are organized around subjects such as song lyrics ("I Write the Songs"), deaths ("The Long Black Veil") and the origins of album and song titles ("I Hold the Title"). Some of the rumors and mysteries Edwards untangles are old favorites, such as Paul McCartney's alleged death, Robert Johnson's purported sale of his soul to the devil and the subject of Carly Simon's "You're so Vain." Others are more recent and obscure, such as Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro's death, what's not tattooed on Tom Waits's chest and the inspiration for the White Stripes's "Hotel Yorba." Squeamish readers may be put off by a few stories, such as those about Elvis's sexual preferences and Led Zeppelin's "mud shark" episode. Edwards, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, peppers his prose with witticisms and references to song lyrics. Endnotes give sources for much of Edwards's information, some of which is from his interviews with the musicians. For random rock 'n roll scuttlebutt, it's a gem." -- Publisher's Weekly

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Thursday, April 5, 2007

Review: Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting it Right / Harry G. Frankfurt




“In his Tanner lectures, Harry Frankfurt continues his exploration of the nature of human agency and practical reasoning. Love, and other “volitional necessities”—things about which we cannot help caring—anchor us in the world and provide us with ends for our actions. Without love, or other kinds of volitionally necessary caring, we would not have an answer to the fundamental question of how we should live. This is a very important essay, written by a first-class philosophical mind, and animated by a humane outlook. It will be of interest not only to philosophers, but also to all those who look to understand the springs of human action.” —Debra Satz, Stanford University


"Frankfurt delves into the ideals of rationality and love, compares the two, and declares love the winner in defining self-commitment to our actions (which is "getting it right"). These arguments are related in superbly written prose and stand well on their own...The commentary, likewise, is well written and presents the reader with an enhanced framework and relevant, thought-provoking objections. "—Library Journal

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Review: The World is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century / Thomas L. Friedman



I'd forgotten the pleasure reading good prose brings. Friedman not only writes well, but does so on an important subject- globalization. He states, "It is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world."


He claims, "When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate". But, how did the world `become flat'? Friedman suggest the trigger events were the collapse of communism, the dot-com bubble resulting in overinvestment in fiber-optic telecommunications, and the subsequent out-sourcing of engineers enlisted to fix the perceived Y2K problem.

Those events created an environment where products, services, and labor are cheaper. However, the West is now losing its strong-hold on economic dominance. Depending on if viewed from the eyes of a consumer or a producer - that's either good or bad, or a combination of both.

What is more sobering is Friedman's elaboration on Bill Gates' statement, "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow. In math and science, our fourth graders are among the top students in the world. By eighth grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations. . . . The percentage of a population with a college degree is important, but so are sheer numbers. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind."

Friedman sounds the alarm with a call for diligence and fortitude - academically, politically, and economically. He sees a dangerous complacency, from Washington down through the public school system. Students are no longer motivated. "In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears -- and that is our problem."

Questions I wish Friedman had explored in further detail are:

1. When should countries do what benefits the global economy, and when should they look out for their own interests? (protectionism, tariffs, quotas, etc.)
2. What will a `flat world' mean to the world's poor? (those living in Haiti, Angola, Kazakhstan, etc.)
3. What cultural values (or absence thereof) are contributing to the West's loss of productivity, education, and excellence? (morality, truth, religion, meaning, hope?)
4. How will further globalization effect cultural distinctions? (Are we heading towards a universal melting pot?)
5. What will a `flat world' mean environmentally - particularly for those countries on the verge of an economic explosion?

Provided by John Zxerce from Amazon.com

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Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Review: The Road / Cormac McCarthy




In a barren, ashen landscape that was once the United States of America, a weary man and his young son are traveling south in search of the ocean. They scavenge for food and shelter, and they must constantly avoid marauding bands of fellow survivors who would prey on them. The one thing that sustains them on their way is their ferocious love for each other. The Road is the story of their heartbreaking journey.

Every now and then, when we need reminding, a great writer shows us one possible future for our species if we continue on the path to self-destruction. In 1957, Nevil Shute gave us On the Beach, and now, 50 years later, Cormac McCarthy has given us an eloquent new version of the same cautionary tale. We didn't listen then. Perhaps we can learn something now.

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By Tom S., for Amazon.com