31 December 2008
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Published on December 31st, 2008 @ 06:04:30 pm, using 600 words, 33 views
A couple of good posts over at Neuronarrative, one on The Laws of Emotion by Nico Frijda. It’s an interview actually, with some good responses including one on SEX!!!! Here’s one to tempt you (but, of course, not the sex one):
In your book, The Laws of Emotion, you discuss the complexity of moving from experiencing an event (good or bad) and the subsequent emotional reaction. I think we’re generally accustomed to think that this is a simple point (a) to point (b) instantaneous movement. What does the actual progression look like and why are we seemingly blind to it?
There are some very simple emotional reactions such as being startled upon hearing a sudden loud noise or experiencing disgust upon seeing a bloody, mutilated face. There is a fairly direct link between the event, its perceived meaning, and one’s reaction to it. Yet, the reaction depends on one’s history and the present context. The disgust one feels is shaped by one’s own bodily response to an offense against bodily integrity, as evidenced by the fact that one “feels” the other’s wounds in one’s own face, and may grasp one’s own nose in reaction.
However, simple reactions like these are exceptions. Most emotions emerge because events promise satisfaction or are offensive at a personal level. When angry with your intimate partner, the anger arises from the awareness that he or she is your partner, and that what he or she said or did conflicts with your wishes for consideration or sympathy or intimacy or independence. Your response, moreover, depends on the nature of your bond: the frequency of frustrations like this, etc. Your anger may flare up, or you may withdraw into silence, or make a mild and sad reproach: after all, he or she is your partner and you cherish your bond (or you do not).
All this goes on automatically, and you may not be aware of it. The path from his/her angering action to your response is complex, touching upon your interests, your joint history, and the context of the event. Even if the angry response to frustration is rooted in evolution, that root is in turn embedded in the brain representations of your personal history, your cultural values, and emotional dispositions of the moment.
But actually, I like this post better, on a new book on gullibility, The Annals of Gullibility. This will tell you why and get you to trot over:
Writing the definitive book on how not to be duped is a notable distinction, but unfortunately for Greenspan it’s not the only one that will be tagged to his name for posterity – because Greenspan is himself one of the victims of the biggest investment scam in history, the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Greenspan lost several hundred thousand in the scam, which devoured $50 billion of defrauded investor cash, so he’s certainly not alone; but if there had been a competition for the greatest irony award of 2008, he’d no doubt be a finalist.
What the hell. I heard Keynes even lost money speculating. And finally, here’s one of the most honest statements I’ve ever heard in a review. Thought I’d share. Click on the link to find out what he’s talking about:
This is not a book that anyone really needs to buy. But if you find yourself in a bookstore, and pass “Thames,” you will find it well worth your while to read the last chapter and fall under Ackroyd’s lyric sway.
Just picture the book’s author as he read that. Happy New Year.
30 December 2008
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Published on December 30th, 2008 @ 08:30:52 pm, using 359 words, 37 views
On Election Night in 2000, Jimmy Carter conceded very early, leaving my wife and me staring at each other, knowing that this nation had just blown the answer when asked “do you want to be grown-ups and deal with the tumultuous future we’re facing?” Rather than sit and listen to the boneheads analyzing (and that was back before the pundits were all the completely vacuous blowhards they are today), we drove 75 miles to a giant mall before it closed and spent 45 minutes and a few bucks there. The major purchase was Stephen Jay Gould’s The Panda’s Thumb. Not a life-changer, the way that election was, but gave me something important to think about besides how f*cked we were all going to be. And started a minor collection of Gould books that taught me about as much as any other writer I’ve ever read.
The blogger at Laelaps at Science Blogs had a similar experience, with a different book, and decided to write up this really nice tribute to Gould and his impact on thinking minds. He doesn’t completely canonize Gould, nicely pointing out some flaws and how Gould didn’t exactly shine in his contests with Edward O. Wilson. But, that said, he does get across the importance of what Gould did to inquiring minds. And how one good writer can inspire another in this touching conclusion:
Gould’s scientific ideas will stand or fall by their own merits as we continue to interrogate nature, but the influence of his writings on me have stretched beyond the minutiae of evolutionary theory. Not only has his work inspired me to look more deeply into history and be more critical of cherished stories, but to pick up the pen myself. If it were not for Gould, I find it doubtful that I would be striving to become a science writer myself, and I always find inspiration by reading his reflections on natural history.
[And while you’re at Science Blogs, here’s a clever variation on the ever-popular “Top Books (Songs, Movies, Car Crashes, etc.)” of this time of year–one blogger’s “Five Books I Wish I’d Never Read.” Hope this starts a new meme.)
29 December 2008
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Published on December 29th, 2008 @ 07:57:40 pm, using 77 words, 36 views
Whatever type of review suits your taste right now over at My Mind on Books. Check it out for a full scale (and not all to complimentary) review of My Stroke of Insight, descriptions of Embracing the Wide Sky and A Dialogue on Consciousness, and a link to a Guardian book review essay on four other cog science books. Complete with convenient Amazon links for your immediate use!! Time to catch up on what’s on your mind.
28 December 2008
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Published on December 28th, 2008 @ 07:34:40 pm, using 1522 words, 59 views
One of the brief highlights epitomizing everything that is Fox News in the last presidential campaign was, when searching for pics for the promo for the first Obama-McCain debate, the channel managed to post pictures of Lincoln and Douglass. One of the first things you have to remember is that Stephen Douglas only used one S in his last name although, if there were a Heaven, two S’s would be required for such an as*hole of a politician. The Douglass with two S’s (and deserved one) was, of course, Frederick Douglass, the other notable contributor of the time to what will be for historians the American Legacy, at least as it was then promoted. The point here is not the usual Fox stupidity or that you will never see a kind word here for Stephen Douglas, no matter those foolish academics impressed with grandeur even in evil causes, but that Lincoln had two major contemporaries who shared the same name except for that S. Much has been written about the Lincoln-Douglas square-offs, less so about the Lincoln-Douglass synergy and opposition, but enough about both to give you some great opportunities to learn about all three men, their times, their impacts on their nation and each other, and what they left us. Their threads are still among the major ones in the American tapestry, Lincoln for his devotion to the American Legacy, Douglass for his unflinching mirror he held up to us regarding that Legacy, and Douglas for the lineage of corroding and undermining that Legacy which lives on even today in the current occupant of the White House.
Below, you’ll find some of the books out there available on the three and some of the material from their flyleaves to summarize what they deal with. I’ll start with the Douglass books, to give you a sense of nobility and what could have been, and then the Douglas-related books, to show you how deep the decay he exemplified embedded into our politics and culture. Master these, and you’ll know not just a lot about the period around the Civil War but also a lot about the same themes that have survived and carry on today. Enjoy.
Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick, Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader and a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery and Save the Union
. . . During three seminal meetings between 1863 and 1865, and through reading each other’s speeches and letters, they managed to forge a strong, mutual understanding and respect that helped convince Lincoln the war could not be truly won without eradicating slavery.
In their provocative account, Paul and Stephen Kendrick draw on unpublished letters and rarely used black abolitionist sources to offer a far-reaching reappraisal of the Civil War’s full meaning; and through the prism of Frederick Douglass’s life they present a surprising portrait of a president no less heroic for his hesitancy over slavery, yet more human in the tangle of his conflicting emotions. Just as the final accounting of the Civil War is incomplete without acknowledging the great and hidden contribution of the black troops that filled the Union ranks–almost two hundred thousand at the end of the war, around a quarter of the entire Union army–so, the Kendricks argue, our appreciation of Lincoln is deepened when his life is paired with that of Douglass, without whose rhetorical fire those black troops might never have been mustered.
James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics
This is a book about two towering figures in our nation’s history. It is a moving story about an improbable friendship, and an important story about an equally improbable alliance. Frontier lawyer and former slave, cautious politician and impassioned reformer, their lives traced different paths that finally converged in the bloody landscape of secession, civil war, and emancipation. Opponents at first, they gradually became allies, and finally friends, each influenced by and attracted to the other. When the pressures of war led Lincoln to embrace emancipation and Douglass to embrace Republican politics, they could finally see eye to eye. Their three meetings in the White House signaled a profound shift in the direction of the Civil War and in the fate of the United States.
John Stauffer, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were the preeminent self-made men of their time. In this masterful dual biography, award-winning Harvard University scholar John Stauffer describes the transformations in the lives of these two giants during a major shift in cultural history, when men rejected the status quo and embraced new ideals of personal liberty. As Douglass and Lincoln reinvented themselves and ultimately became friends, they transformed America.
Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debate That Defined America
. . . the great issue between Lincoln and Douglas was slavery. Douglas was the champion of “popular sovereignty,” of letting slaves and territories decide for themselves whether to legalize slavery. Lincoln drew a moral line, arguing that slavery was a violation both of natural law and of the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence. No majority could ever make slavery right, he argued. . . .
The encounters between Lincoln and Douglas engage a key question in American political life: What is democracy’s purpose? Is it to satisfy the desires of the majority? Or is it to achieve a just and moral public order? These were the real questions in 1858 that led to the Civil War. They remain questions for Americans today.
Roy Morris, Jr., The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln’s Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America
. . . from the time they first set foot in the Prairie State in the early 1830s, Lincoln and Douglas were fated to be political competitors. The Long Pursuit tells the dramatic story of how these two radically different individuals rose to the top rung of American politics, and how their personal rivalry shaped and altered the future of the nation during its most convulsive era. Indeed, had it not been for Douglas, who served as Lincoln’s personal goad, pace horse, and measuring stick, there would have been no Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, no Lincoln presidency in 1860, and perhaps no Civil War six months later. For both men–and for the nation itself–the stakes were that high. [Warning: as you may tell from this summary, this author sees Douglas as “tragic” rather than opportunistic, officious, and amoral, so read it for that view but be aware that sympathizing with Douglas says something about everyone who does it, and it’s not good.]
David Zarefsky, Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate
This vibrant account of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 analyzes the candidates’ patterns of argument and reveals how public sentiment itself was transformed through such encounters. Identifying the four major patterns of argument in the speeches–conspiracy charges, legal disputes, historical questions, and moral issues–Zarefsky ingeniously shows how Lincoln and Douglas used the first three as “surrogate arguments” for the fourth–the morality of slavery–for which they could find no common ground.
If you can only pick one, which should it be? Well, probably Giants, but not for the content. The back cover also has a quote from our president-elect as a kind of endorsement of the book that can give us doubters a bit of hope that his accommodations of truly vile people today (like the Douglas’s of yesteryear) are just strategic and won’t impede his truly dealing appropriately with the tsunami of issues about to hit him. Oh, what the hell, here it is so you can pick the one book yourself:
I like to believe that for Lincoln . . . it was a matter of maintaining within himself the balance between two contradictory ideas–that we must talk and reach for common understandings, precisely because all of us are imperfect and can never act with the certainty that God is on our side; and yet at times we must act nonetheless, as if we are certain, protected from error only by providence.
The best I can do in the face of history is remind myself that it has not always been the pragmatist, the voice of reason, or the force of compromise, that has created the conditions for liberty. The hard, cold facts remind me that it was . . . men like Frederick Douglas who recognized that power would concede nothing without a fight.
Virtually nothing of the American Legacy was achieved without confrontation and without forceful anchors setting outside boundaries far broader than the compromisers (like Douglas) would have set, thus allowing for more transforming change within the range of possibilities that were subsequently set. Lincoln and Douglass both knew this and allowed more to get done because of their positions than the ultimately tragic compromises that Douglas couldn’t get past. The compromises were tragic, not Douglas, and only prolonged and made worse their eventual and inevitable collapse. I truly hope that Obama has read this book and not just allowed a quote from one of his two autobiographies (to this point) to be used. It shouldn’t take long to find out.
24 December 2008
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Published on December 24th, 2008 @ 05:03:42 pm, using 254 words, 45 views
As impressive, depressing (literally and figuratively), and ultimately world-changing as the current economic disaster will end up being, it’s not going to be the major topic of historians by the end of this century despite its monument to human hubris and self-absorption. That honor will go to our creation of the perfect storm arriving of changing climate and energy, coupled with their impacts on water and food. We just think the economy is the big news for our futures. One of the more rational things for you do to do in the face of this is (no, not get drunk and make a cave your home) to learn all you can about the larger waves arriving once we think we’ve gotten the economy under control.
Fortunately for you, RealClimate, one of the absolute best sources for actual scientific info (versus Fox News, talk radio, Sarah Palin bullsh*t) on climate and its accompanying friends, has its annual Best Books of 2008 post up, AND it also kindly provides links to past years’ Best Lists and links to some of the works of the blog’s regular contributors. It’s like having all your shopping available in one store!!!!!! Go check it out, read some of their other posts, then bookmark the site. It’ll be one of the ones you need to consult frequently just to understand what the hell is going on and how you might be able to deal with it (as well as how to wash the stench of the Fox crowd disinformation off you).
23 December 2008
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Published on December 23rd, 2008 @ 06:29:44 pm, using 422 words, 30 views
I’m not sure what explains the world and how it operates, including humans and their societies, best–ocean waves, clouds, or traffic. Actually, toss out clouds. Not enough of them, but we could consider the currents that pull them together. The world, you see, is flow, of matter, of history, of everything, even your ability to read this and pull it together, too. Sometimes the flows are unitary, stable, and predictable. Sometimes multiple upon multiple, unstable, swirling, and anybody’s guess will do. Sort of like our economy, which is a set of flows of different types, too. But, if you want a good flow model just to derive your life lessons from, traffic will do very nicely. How we structure it, how that structure allows far more constructive to happen than without structure, how weirdly bizarre things can still sometimes happen within and even because the structure, and how it can all blow up and go to Hell anyway. See the “economy” thing now?
Which is sort of the point of this review at Cognitive Daily of the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, although the bloggers don’t really go off the deep end (or meds) like I do above. Here’s one part that will give you a taste of their take and where they could have expanded it into more reality:
This, perhaps, is the central lesson of the book. Traffic and highway management isn’t like other engineering problems, because driver behavior adapts quickly to new situations, which can create completely different traffic problems. Consider a narrow road with a speed limit of 30 miles per hour, lined on both sides with imposing oak trees. Each year there are several crashes involving vehicles hitting the trees or cars emerging from driveways between the trees, so engineers decide to cut down the trees and widen the road, creating ample shoulders and improved sightlines. The expected result is a safer road. What actually happens is that drivers increase their speed on the wide (if less scenic) road. There are just as many crashes as before, but because cars are traveling faster, there are more fatalities. The “safer” road is ends up being more dangerous.
Enough of real life there to get you going. They have much more in a nice review there, and it may introduce you to a good blog, Cognitive Daily, and the family of blogs it belongs to at Science Blog. Good company and insights into how the world works. And it’s free!! What are you waiting for?
22 December 2008
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Published on December 22nd, 2008 @ 05:50:27 pm, using 177 words, 37 views
This interesting blog has its own take on Outliers, which we’ve defended here a couple of times. The writer doesn’t worry that Malcolm Gladwell oversimplifies for the masses and is over-obvious about points academics (but not the public) know well, which is, as we’ve noted, why he’s had a gajillion more impact than those academics. If you haven’t read it by now, maybe this review will give you a couple more incentives. Here’s a taste of the writing in case you’re still stalling:
Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book, Outliers, is an interesting read. It is devoted to the reasons some people succeed and some don’t. The reasons are often not what you would expect. On the matter of class, he captures the difference in impact “wealthier parents” and “poorer parents” have on their children very nicely. He sums up his discussion with “the sense of entitlement that has been taught is perfectly suited to succeed in the modern world.”
Which leads into a nice set of examples of the implications of all that. Go on. It’s pretty short.
21 December 2008
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Published on December 21st, 2008 @ 10:02:11 am, using 147 words, 35 views
I guess it’s good to remain optimistic in these pessimistic times. That seems to be what this Reuters review of a batch of “how to get rich” business books is getting at. Some of them are re-dos of some of the oldies from our last pre-depression days, others are newer, including the extolling of T. Boone Pickens. To its credit, the review does note:
The book came out last summer, before the news that Pickens’ funds lost billions as oil prices tanked. But as the tycoon and alternative-fuel advocate wrote, it’s never too late to start over.
Nothing real profound here, but, if you’re looking for a respite from the econ gloom, you might enjoy the reminders of books to look into. And if you get any good ideas about how to stay afloat in this storm (short of felonies . . . and I guess misdemeanors), let us know.
20 December 2008
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Published on December 20th, 2008 @ 05:37:15 pm, using 442 words, 42 views
James McPherson is one of the best and most forthright scholars in the Civil War/Abe Lincoln field. This is a guy who has no problem calling what the South did what it was–treason. I realize that in this “we can’t get anything done unless we bring all voices together and give everyone a veto over doing what needs to be done, including homophobic ministers [sic] who fed the Terri Schiavo nightmare” time, we’re not supposed to admit that some principles lead to a better world for everyone while others we know from history just feed destructive and immoral biases and crimes. Our new president-to-be–straight from the long-time faction of US history that said oh, no, wait for King George to compromise, oh, yeah, these compromises on slavery is the best we should try for, oh, gosh, hasn’t the South suffered enough, oh, my, we can’t punish Nixon for Watergate, Reagan and Bush I for Iran-Contra because that might lead to impoliteness so let’s let the precedents stand so Bush II can come in and blow the whole damn Constitution apart, a guy wanting the governing coalition in the U.S. to be the audience to whom Dr. King wrote his letter from the Birmingham jail, the ironies of all ironies–would prefer to demur to the Cliff Clavins and Frasier Cranes who dominate our political discourse. Not so, Dr. McPherson. And, on top of all that, he writes extremely well.
Well, now he has out probably the shortest bio of Abe you’ll ever find, cleverly titled Abraham Lincoln. And, because he does both know the subject and relate it entertainingly and educationally, you can get through it easily and be able to hold your own in the coming conversations around Abe’s birth next year. Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s Brian Dirck, another of those erudite authorities, who has provided another of his excellent “good, bad, bottom line” reviews on McPherson’s latest:
The Bottom Line: a nice little biography. I don’t think serious students of Lincoln will learn much that is new here, but then that is not the book’s purpose. I can see giving this book to someone unfamilar with Lincoln who wants to get the essentials of his life story. McPherson’s crystal clear writing style makes it an entirely suitable book for any general reader.
To find out how he got to that “bottom line,” head over to his terrific blog, where you’ll also find an interviewer with a recent biographer of Mary Lincoln and news of Dirck’s own excellent Lincoln the Lawyer going paperback (so you’ll have less excuse for not picking it up).
18 December 2008
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Published on December 18th, 2008 @ 05:56:34 pm, using 262 words, 49 views
Not sure if you’re into this sort of thing, but the Law and Politics Book Review, done by that section of the American Political Science Association, has a set of reviews out on topics in, yes, law and politics in its THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF LAW AND POLITICS, eds. Keith E. Whittington, R. Daniel Kelemen, and Gregory A. Caldeira. Each topic in the book apparently gets its own scholarly review, and those topics have clearly never been more relevant than today. Here’s the Intro abstract for you to get a better idea before you head over there and make your way through the interesting subjects (you’ll just feel smarter afterward, trust me):
The study of law and politics is a cornerstone of the discipline of political science, and it has been one of the productive areas of cross-fertilization between the various subfields of political science and between political science and other cognate disciplines. THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF LAW AND POLITICS, edited by Keith E. Whittington, R. Daniel Kelemen, and Gregory A. Caldeira, seeks to provide a comprehensive survey of the field of law and politics in all its diversity, ranging from such traditional subjects as theories of jurisprudence, constitutionalism, judicial politics and law and society to such re-emerging subjects as comparative judicial politics, international law, and democratization. The volume gathers together leading scholars in the field to assess key literatures shaping the discipline today and to help set the direction of research in the decade ahead. The contributions to this symposium discuss the Handbook and the state of the field more generally.
17 December 2008
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Published on December 17th, 2008 @ 08:27:10 pm, using 177 words, 45 views
Cliff Clavin was in “Cheers.” “Cheers” was in Boston. And the Boston Globehas this story on the Cliff Clavins who will bellow all their lives and never understand just how pathetic and hollow they are when tearing down Abe. Coincidence?
Just note all the things left unsaid in their sophistry. Slavery? Never heard of it. Treason? What’s that? We were just protecting “states’ rights.” Well, no, not the rights of states who saw their demands to keep slavery outside their borders shot down by a Supreme Court decision the Clavins of that day fully supported, but the “states’ rights” that allowed them to enslave fellow human beings as their “right.”
I don’t give time to the mow-ronic bleatings of the Lincoln haters, especially the heavily “credentialed” but heavily ignorant ones in academe, here. The article will show you why. Just keep it in mind the next time you are tempted by the “equal time,” “balance,” “objective” bullsh*t as Abe’s birthday arrives. These people would still enslave and lie about it. That’s all you need to know.
16 December 2008
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Published on December 16th, 2008 @ 07:30:27 pm, using 262 words, 52 views
neuroNARRATIVE is carrying an interview with Gary Small that might freak your freak a bit about his (and co-author Gigi Vorgan’s) book, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Basic premise? That our technologies are changing our brains. Good thing for some of us, maybe, especially if it worked on the Cliff Clavins who dominate our talk radio (politics and sports). Here’s how Small describes it. Go, read, then check out the interview (including the reference to one of the best books of your life (if you’re my age anyway)–Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death) and a brief accompanying video. The whole book sounds good.
We know that technology is changing our lives, but it is also changing our brains. Young people spend more and more time today using technology (computers, PDAs, TV, videos) and much less time engaged in direct social contact. Our UCLA brain scanning studies are showing that such repeated technology exposure alters brain circuitry, and young developing brains, which usually have the greatest exposure, are the most vulnerable.
I believe that this perpetual technology exposure is leading to the next major milestone in brain evolution. Over 300,000 years ago, Neanderthals discovered hand-held tools, which led to the co-evolution of language, goal-directed behavior, social networking, and accelerated development of the frontal lobe, which controls these functions. Today, video-game-brain, Internet addiction, and other technology side effects appear to be suppressing frontal lobe executive skills and our ability to communicate face-to-face. Instead, our brains are developing circuitry for on-line social networking and adapting to a new multitasking technology culture.
13 December 2008
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Published on December 13th, 2008 @ 07:58:44 am, using 819 words, 45 views
Although we do have to note that this nice review of the National Portrait Gallery’s current exhibition in DC on Abe is not affiliated with the paper’s insipid Book Review and its editor and chief reviewers, where the really heinous reviewing sins reside. The reviewer manages to give a touching overview of the exhibit and tip you off to a few of the better, more recent books in the Abe pantheon at the same time. Not much of the usual “I write for the NY Times and know better than you, plus I go to cool parties” crap their usual suspects spew out. Here’s a bit from the review that tells you that the reviewer actually gets Lincoln:
. . . Lincoln had a tragic vision of the world; he grew up surrounded by familial death and disregard; his marriage was difficult; two children died; his career was pockmarked by failures. He suffered greatly but acted as if he had a right not to happiness itself, but only to its pursuit.
And the reviewer notes that, for all Abe’s commitment to our political system and its democratic processes, there comes a point when you have to acknowledge the “bi” in bipartisan and when one side is no longer playing by the rules. When you have an implacable opponent gaming your cherished system, insisting their way or the highway, as Republicans have done for decades now, you can’t keep being a patsy. Abe knew that states’ rights, free citizens, and the promise of the American Legacy would all be swept away if the events and momentum of the pre-Civil War days were not forcefully countered, lines drawn in the sand and defended. The Democrats, even the Lincoln-quoting Obama, have yet to demonstrate they even have a clue, as the auto bailout once again proved. Here’s what the reviewer says:
. . . He believed that political compromise was the motor of democratic life. And the biggest compromises at America’s founding were those involving slavery. It was only by allowing slavery into the Constitution that the Constitution was made possible; it was only by settling for containment rather than elimination that the better angels of early America could even create a United States.
Lincoln, though, rose to the presidency at the very moment when that tragic compromise failed. So in this respect, the flexible politician became an absolutist. There was, in his mind, a fundamental principle that could not be abandoned: the Union. He cleaved fiercely — almost fanatically — to it because it already was a compromise, though one generated out of an ideal toward which the nation would have to move.
That conviction forced him to refine his thinking and discipline his actions. In a debate with Douglas, Lincoln referred to an “eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world.” The wrong, he said, was “the divine right of kings.” The right was “the common right of humanity.” The notion of “divine right” left a stain in the form of American slavery; the notion of “common right” was America’s founding principle.
Those inalienable rights of humanity could be guaranteed only by something like the Union, so even when it came to abolishing slavery, Lincoln was cautious and protective, hewing strictly to the Constitution, knowing the wrong could be fully undone only with an amendment, but believing, finally, that he could at least, as commander in chief in time of war, free slaves in the rebellious territories. The Emancipation Proclamation is written in stolid, legalistic prose in which all of Lincoln’s rhetorical gifts are shunted aside. That too was done in service to the Union.
Then he was freed to define his larger vision. Andrew Delbanco, in Mr. Foner’s anthology, argues that the Civil War, for all its trauma, was unlike many other wars in that it did not produce a crisis that left the country without a sense of purpose. That is because, he suggests, Lincoln found “transcendent meaning in the carnage” and affirmed that meaning for both sides. He really became another founding father.
Yeah, feel free to quibble a bit with the “hewing strictly to the Constitution” part, but basically exactly right. As Kennedy reportedly said, you can compromise on process, not on principle. Which is disaster if your principles are ridiculous or evil, but Abe’s were the heart and soul of the American Legacy to human history. He answered Franklin’s question about our ability to keep our Republic with the most resounding positive ever uttered. We, of course, are on the cusp of trashing it completely, but maybe having exhibits like this and celebrations of not just Abe’s life but his principles will wake us up in time to preserve what we can. It helps to have really good reviews of really good projects, like we have here. Even in the New York Times!!
(What are the odds the reviewer could replace the Book Review editor???)
12 December 2008
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Published on December 12th, 2008 @ 08:02:14 pm, using 283 words, 53 views
Over at ALincolnBlog, Brian Dirck has a review up on Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln by John Stauffer. The subtitle pretty well gives you the plot, and Dirck has a good format for book reviews, the basics, the good, the bad, and the bottom line. You get two bios for the price of one here and apparently Stauffer pulls off the “parallel lives” part about as well as it can be done. Here’s your tempter so read, go to the blog, then check out the book:
. . . The book offers a very solid, well-written examination of Abraham Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’ life stories. I was particularly impressed with the smooth narrative flow of the book; a project like this could too easily wind up reading like some sort of metaphorical tennis match, switching back and forth from one man to the other and back again, until the exercise becomes tiresome. Giants never became tiresome; it is a good read.
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More generally, Stauffer’s book is entirely fairminded. This is particularly an issue when Douglass’ perspective on Lincoln is used to grind this or that historical axe. People who dislike Lincoln love to selectively quote Douglass’ famous statement that Lincoln was only “the white man’s president,” and that black Americans were, at best, his “stepchildren.” Lincoln’s admirers, conversely, often focus only on Douglass’ praise of Lincoln, and his assertion that seemed entirely at ease–almost colorblind–when in Douglass’ presence. In fact, Douglass said a great many things good and bad about Lincoln; his point of view on the president was complex, and changed over time. Stauffer has a very nice feel for this, and he takes Douglass in his totality.
11 December 2008
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Published on December 11th, 2008 @ 06:40:54 pm, using 122 words, 124 views
Not one of your “Best of 2008″ lists, but, if you’re into mind books, My Mind on Books has a list of some of the 2008 fare, complete with handy links directly to a willing online store, and tips us off to some of the titles we can look forward to on 2009 lists. Maybe even one of the “Best” lists.
And, not exactly a list of books, but every Wednesday, Neuroanthropology (what it sounds like) puts up a nice list of relevant articles. This one also recommends the Jennifer Michael Hecht interview we recommended a couple of days ago. So Neuro obviously is intelligent and has good taste. And you can find a new list every week and not have to wait between years!!!!!!!
10 December 2008
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Published on December 10th, 2008 @ 06:11:36 pm, using 281 words, 65 views
Really interesting review over at Understanding Society of Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age on how the differences in cultures and ideology in the U.S., Britain, and France all led to different constructions of those nations’ railroad systems. Sorta sounds like the Gladwell/Outliers stuff, right? Imagine–circumstance and history shaping people and systems. Maybe if our ideology could admit such things we wouldn’t be facing such a blinkered future. Anyway, the site is a really good sociology/philosophy site if you’re into that and want to check it out for more. What’s that? You’d like a sample? Well, . . . okay.
This example illustrates the insights that can be distilled from comparative historical sociology. Dobbin takes a single technology and documents a range of outcomes in the way in which the technology is built out into a national system. And he attempts to isolate the differences in structures and cultures in the three settings that would account for the differences in outcomes. He offers a causal analysis of the development of the technology in the three settings, demonstrating how the mechanism of policy culture imposes effects on the development of the technology. The inherent possibilities represented by the technology intersect with the economic circumstances and the policy cultures of the three national settings, and the result is a set of differentiated organizations and outcomes in the three countries. The analysis is rich in its documentation of the social mechanisms through which policy culture influenced technology development; the logic of his analysis is more akin to process tracing than to the methods of difference and similarity in Mill’s methods.
Aren’t you glad you asked now?
09 December 2008
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Published on December 9th, 2008 @ 06:27:55 pm, using 113 words, 67 views
Another review of the Kunhardt’s Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon, also approving, as this one did. It’s a bigger book (literally) than some of the others, with plenty of pics, than most of the more recent ones. This review also spends more time on the narrative’s take on Douglass as well and how he and Lincoln’s son Robert were in a kind of competition to spin Abe’s image after his death. This review is quick and concise, just what you might be interested in if you still need that nudge. Think how good the book will look on your coffee table and how impressive that will make you look.
08 December 2008
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Published on December 8th, 2008 @ 08:31:47 pm, using 403 words, 84 views
Because I had read and very much enjoyed Doubt by Jennifer Michael Hecht, I was happy to see her next non-fiction, non-poetry book come out. Which was a good thing, since it was about Happiness, or rather, the myth of it. Hecht is one of those writers who can take the history of an abstract topic, demonstrate its continued relevance, and do it all with comfortable prose and genuine humor. Her books look formidable in heft, but she gets you through them easily and memorably. I’ve read a lot of much shorter books that took longer and stuck less. Why bring her up now?
Well, she has a short but telling interview over at neuroNARRATIVE that is worth your time, gives you a sense of her literary prowess, and sells you on getting one of her books as quickly as you can. Doesn’t matter which one. You’ll want the other one right after that. Here’s a quote from the interview to entice you:
Doubt: A History is the story of atheism and religious doubt, as well as philosophical doubt, through all history, all over the world. One of the coolest things about the history of doubt is that every generation of doubters has drawn on doubters from the past, so that there really is a coherent narrative across time. As I say in the book, people think the history of doubt is a collection of shadows on the history of belief, but that is not so. Draw an outline around all these shadows and they pop out as a story all their own. It is like looking at a map upside down - takes a moment to get used to.
One of the main themes in the history of doubt is that it is important to remember death. Life feels like a narrative, it feels important. But the fact of death suggests that life is no logical narrative and life is not important in the way we think it is when we forget about death. All the great philosophers say to meditate on death, remember death, it is better to dwell in the house of mourning than in the house of mirth. The world is what it is and only makes the sense that it does if you accept the parts that at first sound disturbing. Eventually, remembering death makes you able to experience life.
All of her stuff is that good. I promise.
06 December 2008
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Published on December 6th, 2008 @ 09:04:40 am, using 214 words, 37 views
I know this isn’t a regular artsy kind of review, but baseball will officially turn the page over to the inauthentic excesses of its last several years when its last real and truly great pitcher retires today. Greg Maddux is hanging up the spikes, and this review of his career on CNN/SI gets his career and its meaning in this age of bastardization of what sports once meant in America just right. Maddux has been the epitome of taking his craft seriously by keeping it fun and of gaining his place in our history by not getting in anyone’s face. Steroids? No way. Guns in sweatpants? Get real. Respect for the game and its traditions and science? Completely. Read the whole thing and then you’ll get this final graf:
Maddux was the genuine article, a ballplayer evolved to the highest form. It is fitting that he is the winningest pitcher alive, an honor he should keep up to his very last breath. This appreciation, not by accident, made no mention of any career statistic of Maddux, no more than you would cite records sold to describe the voice of Sinatra. Maddux is synonymous with the art of pitching. He was that good. Never again will we see, or hear, anyone quite like him.
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Published on December 6th, 2008 @ 07:14:54 am, using 450 words, 31 views
Another excellent example of thoughtless reviewing today in the Guardian, coincidentally on Outliers again, basically making the same clueless point as the nitwit reviewer detailed in the post below. Here’s the complaint that you get about the book, Gladwell, and his other work, basically over and over:
The problem with this book, though, is that the end point [we are not self-made. We are made, partly by ourselves, sure, but crucially, also by the times and society we live in] isn’t particularly startling.
The problem for these reviewers is that they (in this case a left-wing reviewer who has a communal view of the world) reveal their cluelessness about others in that community they see as influential on others. Here’s the rest of that paragraph:
Unless you are an avowedly right-wing individualist, you probably already buy this core message. As the book unfolds there is a hunger for something deeper and more profound that never turns up.
Dear Mr. Reviewer. Please come visit America. Not your comparable and comfortable blue state America but RED STATE AMERICA, where the idea of the self-made man (and yes, I mean “man") is as alive and well as John Wayne’s teachings and any hope for reality seeping in has to come from those gifted in story-telling, like Gladwell, and memorable examples of how favorite illusions about “hard work” inevitably leading to success have to be contested 24/7 on Red Bull. We send people to prison here for very long periods of time because we DON’T believe that we are not self-made. We laud and allow unwarranted privileges to some very creepy and self-serving people who got born at the right time into the right families and circumstances (like shooting at a possum and oil bubbling up). Your “avowedly right-wing individualists” made up 47% of the voters in our November election. They need every reminder they can possibly get that we’re in this together and not every little acorn grows into the tree it could be. Some never get out of the cold hard earth they get dropped on. The worldview you cluelessly minimize has been the worldview of this nation’s presidency for the last 8 years, with everything that has resulted and your undoubted surprise that such things could happen in this world. What could those Americans have been thinking? Well, they weren’t thinking what you thought was so obvious, that’s for sure.
When you’ve visited Red State America and see how many people need to hear Gladwell’s message, you and your fellow secluded and self-deluded nitwits might, might, be ready to write an intelligent review of Outliers. We’ll be waiting to greet you. Those of us not in prison or working our second or third job.
05 December 2008
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Published on December 5th, 2008 @ 06:01:50 pm, using 530 words, 31 views
I get that someone with the success of Malcolm Gladwell, with his The Tipping Point and Blink, could engender outright jealousy and that his ubiquitous and over-the-top appearance can outrun its coverage. Okay. But, like those other two books, his latest, Outliers: The Story of Success, is once again a great popular book that takes an important point, even if not 100% definite and totally universal, and lets regular folks in on why it’s important. In this case, it’s the obvious but downplayed fact that talent and brains aren’t enough, no matter what our myths tell us. A lot of Einstein’s have tended bar, a lot of King’s ended up hanged. The difference was the way the flows of history and society came together for particular people at particular times. You think Abe Lincoln was the only poor boy who made good in Illinois? Again, nothing profound, but well pulled together and more than hinting that we all need to change the way we look at things pretty substantially.
All in all, Outliers has gotten a good reception, but there always has to be somebody hanging in the back saying, “Oh, yeah, well, look at his hair. And he messed up on some fact.” In this case, it’s this review, calling Gladwell “a guru for the brain dead.” Well, count me dead. I have Ph.D., have taught and worked in and created government agencies from scratch. Doesn’t make me special but does give me a background to judge Gladwell myself, plus a life experience that says his message has needed a louder telling by a guy with access to the main media for a long time. I’ve taught that message for almost 3 decades, so, no, I didn’t need Gladwell to tell it to me. But I appreciate greatly that he’s glommed onto it and broadcast it loudly. And the review commits the worst sin–claiming Gladwell got something wrong that he didn’t (that Stanley Milgrams’ Six Degrees of Separation has been proven wrong when, in fact, it hasn’t and has been the basis for expansion and growth of more than one academic discipline). Rule #1–get your facts straight before you call someone else ignorant. Hard for all of us to live by all the time, but especially important for someone thinking he’s cool enough to bring Gladwell down. Don’t believe me that Gladwell is smarter and better than the reviewer, that he gets the concepts right even if all he does is tell stories about them, stories that get the concepts across better than the teachers do? Well, check out an academic who uses Gladwell in his admin science courses but not reviewers for something called “The Register.” The snarly reviewer reminds me of deadly boring instructors I used to teach with who would sniff about the teachers who were good “entertainers” and, coincidentally perhaps, effective.
So, read the nitwit for his example of “how bad reviewers . . . well, review badly” and then go read the good reviews here and here and here. Or better yet. Get the book. Just a bunch of stories. Really good stories. With a moral that you need to walk around with for a long time.
02 December 2008
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Published on December 2nd, 2008 @ 05:46:52 pm, using 240 words, 53 views
The lists of the year’s top books have started, and here are a couple of blogs that have interesting possibilities for your consideration. My Mind on Books is focusing, of course, on the “mind” books in the NY Times‘ top books, and, Times not withstanding, they seem worth perusing, including two, The Drunkard’s Walk and Predictably Irrational, that we’ve spoken well of here (and seem more relevant than ever in these times that refute, oh, everything economists have claimed to be true for decades). (Links in the post, so now you’ll have to go over there.) And the Christian Science Monitor’s book blog also points to the year’s best fiction, including Blue Star, the sequel to the equally great Jim the Boy (and yes, go look for them, too), which we’ve also heralded.
Finally, while not a list of this year’s best, neuroNARRATIVE has posts on a couple of oldies of sorts that are still worth your time. Jonah Lehrer, a great blogger at Science Blogs, discusses his Proust Was a Neuroscientist and tips us to his coming How We Decide. Then comes the post with Susan Blackmore and her The Meme Machine, which basically launched us on the debates over meme evolution and showed how models of evolution can apply well beyond genes, despite the turf-protecting purists in the biology community. Dare you to read either post and not want to go get the books.
Seriously. I dare you.
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