Book Review: Unpacking an Israeli Obsession
by Jacob Lederman
Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession by Haggai Ram. Stanford University Press (2009).
In the context of frequent rhetorical sparring and escalating threats of nuclear destruction, little common ground is said to exist between Israel and Iran. Enmity between the two states is often framed as the product of irreconcilable geopolitical, ideological, and strategic differences. Iran’s support of terrorist organizations that seek Israel’s destruction, the regime’s religious character, and supposedly anti-Semitic leadership all appear to ensure confrontation between the two states.
Book Review: Radical Imaginings
by Abe Walker
Imaginal Machines by Stevphen Shukaitis. Autonomedia (2009).
At every level, Imaginal Machines is a subversive text. Against the rising tide of complacency, Stephven Shukaitis sketches out new possibilities for political engagement that are at once seditious and savvy.
Book Review: “A Quiet Unlike Any Twilight”
by Doug Sparks
Illustrating the Machine that Makes the World by Joshua Poteat. The University of Georgia Press (2009).
In 1851, the same year Moby-Dick was published and the first World’s Fair was held in London, German engraver and printer J.G. Heck published his Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science. The scientific revolution that began in the mid-sixteenth century was over and science had assumed its modern form.
Book Review: This New Yet Still Approachable America
by Tim Krause
A New Literary History of America by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Belknap Press (2009).
A book as long and as rich as A New Literary History of America cannot have justice done to its many individual essays in the space of a single review. Nevertheless, highlights from the volume fairly leap out every twenty or thirty pages or so, begging especial mention
Book Review: Pictures of an Institution
by Lavelle Porter
The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. W. W. Norton and Company (2010).
The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected by Jonathan R. Cole. Public Affairs (2010).
In The Marketplace of Ideas, Menand narrows his emphasis to a set of particular issues, but in the process provides a useful overview of American higher education. The book is organized into three essays examining three particular issues in higher education: 1) the history of the general education curriculum, 2) the logic of academic disciplines and the allure of “interdisciplinarity” as a buzzword in academia, and 3) the politics of professors and the academic labor market.
Book Review: “Beyond the Intensities of the Fountain”
by Alison Powell
A Village Life: Poems by Louise Glück. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2009).
One way to approach a book of poems is to imagine not how the poet speaks, but from what stage. Wordsworth talks out of the woods, on a long walk. Allen Ginsberg shouts to his reader from a crowded bar.
Music Review: New Versions of Some Old Classics
by Naomi Perley
Petrushka and Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. Performed by the Győr National Ballet. Il mondo della luna by Franz Joseph Haydn. Performed by Gotham Chamber Orchestra. This review is about three recent adaptations of classical works: The Győr National Ballet’s take on Stravinsky’s early-twentieth-century masterpieces, Petrushka and Rite of Spring, and Gotham Chamber Opera’s […]
Who Cares About Wal-Mart?
by Carl Lindskoog
Nelson Lichtenstein, The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. Metropolitan Books, 2009 Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. Harvard University Press, 2009 Many New Yorkers might wonder what use it is to understand a company like Wal-Mart. After all, with no Wal-Marts in the city […]
Singing the Body Politic
by Alison Powell
Peter Swirski, Ed. I Sing the Body Politic: History as Prophecy in Contemporary American Literature. McGill University Press, 2009 One December day in 1817, John Keats wrote to his brother the following: “I had not a dispute but a disquisition… on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went […]
The End of Print – or Something More
by Daniel Douglas
Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy by Alex S. Jones. Oxford University Press (2009) “I don’t read the newspaper, I get my news online” is a phrase heard so often, it could be considered the battle cry of the digital-age. And as with any battle, this one is not without its casualties. Today […]
