http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/Books/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Wed, 12 Oct 2005 07:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2352/the_real_case_for_israel/ It is not everyday that a professor hires a prestigious law firm to threaten the University of California Press. Yet, for months, Alan Dershowitz, Harvard's Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, tried to stop UC Press from publishing Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah. When the Press' director Lynne Withey replied that she believed in academic freedom and would therefore go ahead with the book, Dershowitz sent letters to the university's board of trustees and even to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, asking them to intervene on his behalf. Following both the trustees' and governor's decision not to get involved, one would have thought that the struggle would end. But now that the book is on the shelves, it seems that a new campaign… books international affairs middle east Susan J. Douglas Thu, 15 Jun 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2695/overthrow_over_and_over/ The old saw goes, "the trend is your friend."  Let's try that one again. Stephen Kinzer's new book, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books) puts the kibosh on that notion. Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, deconstructs America's disturbingly counterproductive foreign policy through competing critiques of the country's imperialism and its incompetence. His chronicle of America's role in interventions into 14 sovereign nations posits failure and avarice as our lasting progeny. It is a history lesson we can't afford to forget.  Surfers, slackers, grass skirts and sunsets--that's what Hawaii is all about, right? Think again. Think regime change. The 1893 overthrow of Hawaii's monarch, Queen Liluokalani, launched 110 years of American-led regime… books politics corruption Susan J. Douglas Thu, 22 Jun 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2694/regime_change_and_its_discontents/ Can books still make history? They used to. This seemed particularly true in the '60s, when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Michael Harrington's The Other America and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique launched, respectively, the environmental movement, the war on poverty and the women's movement. Of course, back then, presidents read books. (President Kennedy had his Science Advisory Committee read Silent Spring and it corroborated Carson's findings, leading to the regulation and then banning of DDT.) Despite often powerful opposition to these authors and the movements they helped ignite, these books transformed American politics and the everyday lives of millions. And it is these social changes in particular--environmental protection, lifting people out of poverty, gender equity--that the Bush administration has assiduously… government: adminstration books politics Susan J. Douglas Tue, 27 Jun 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2706/the_senselessness_of_guantamo/ Chicago Lawyer Joseph Marguiles' Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (Simon & Schuster) is about as convincing an indictment of Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and at least a few dozen civilian and military advisors as can be imagined in an atmosphere of government secrecy. Margulies, who represents some of the men incarcerated within the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, uses his position as an advocate to, well, advocate. But despite any bias he might harbor as a defense lawyer, Margulies has used his unusual access to top-secret operations to write a book that ought to persuade anybody--regardless of political ideology--that Bush has allowed immoral and probably illegal treatment of fellow human beings. Margulies… Guantanamo Civil Liberties Books War on Terror Susan J. Douglas Fri, 07 Jul 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2704/architectural_casualties_of_war/ On Nov. 9, 1993, Croat artillery relentlessly bombarded the Bosnian town of Mostar. Their principal target was the Stari Most, a graceful, arching Ottoman bridge that held no strategic or military value. Linking the town's Muslim east and Croat west, the bridge had long symbolized Mostar's proud history of tolerance and cosmopolitanism--its deliberate destruction was intended to erase this legacy and physically rend its communities. The bridge's demise is one recent example of the fate of architecture in wartime. From the firebombing of Dresden in World War II to the present-day looting of Iraq's archaeological heritage, the built environment has suffered tremendously in the conflicts of the past century. But under what circumstances is it appropriate to focus upon the… architecture war and peace books Susan J. Douglas Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2699/writer_without_borders/ Eduardo Galeano disdains borders, both in life and in literature. Exiled from his native Uruguay after the 1973 military coup, he returned to Montevideo in 1985, where he continues to live and write. Galeano's books subvert the distinctions between history, poetry, memoir, political analysis and cultural anthropology. With a graceful sense of craft, he uses "only words that really deserve to be there" to convey a humanely moral perspective on matters both personal and political. His writing honors the experiences of everyday life as a contrast to the mass media that "manipulates consciousness, conceals reality and stifles the creative imagination ... in order to impose ways of life and patterns of consumption." By multiplying seldom heard voices, Galeano refutes the… Central America South America Books Politics Civil Liberties Susan J. Douglas Tue, 18 Jul 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2742/death_of_a_toker_utopia/ The motto of Rainbow Farm in Vandalia, Mich., could have been "A Working-Class Hippie Is Something to Be." On Memorial and Labor Day weekends from 1996 to 2000, a few thousand amplifier-factory workers, hippie girls and truckers' wives-turned-political-activists camped out there to smoke weed, listen to rock 'n' roll, hear pro-legalization speeches and commune with the land and each other. A 34-acre campground owned by a gay couple named Tom Crosslin and Rolland Rohm, Rainbow Farm was located in a hardcore Republican part of southwest Michigan. The county's prosecutor, Scott Teter, believed he was "guided by the Lord" and crusaded against abortion and drugs. After several attempts to squelch the festivals, Teter succeeded in May 2001, when a police raid,… Books Religion and Spirituality Civil Liberties Susan J. Douglas Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2743/jane_jacobs_reconsidered/ When Jane Jacobs died this past spring, the flood of obituaries carried with them a litany of praise. Jacobs, they said, had faced down the great, infamous builder Robert Moses, ended neighborhood-killing urban renewal policies, and transformed urban planning with her lyrical evocation of Greenwich Village's "intricate sidewalk ballet" in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. And yet, these sorts of tributes to a "legend"--while not undeserved--gloss over political and historical context, and drown questions of Jacobs' larger significance for postwar history in a readymade bath of piety and awe. So it is welcome that, after a fitting period of mourning and tribute, the first book-length treatment of Jacobs' life and work, Alice Sparberg Alexiou's Jane Jacobs: Urban… books art and culture architecture Susan J. Douglas Tue, 01 Aug 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2744/cmon_get_happy/ Toward the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up," an essay about his personal decline during the Great Depression, he wrote, "The natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness." Glancing at the headlines today, it's hard not to agree. Within the past six months, a spate of books on happiness has appeared in stores as if to remind us of our right to pursue it. Positive-psychology enthusiasts Daniel Gilbert and Jonathan Haidt arrived with Stumbling on Happiness and The Happiness Hypothesis, respectively. Former cell biologist-cum-Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, with Richard Gere's seal of approval, wrote Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. And Darrin M. McMahon, an intellectual historian, produced the exhaustively researched and edifying… books religion and spirituality art and culture Susan J. Douglas Mon, 14 Aug 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2729/narcissists_us/ "It seems like just yesterday I was at the White House staying in the Lincoln bedroom, and everything was wonderful." These were the words of former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland to a group of teenagers in early July. Rowland was trying to explain his downward trajectory from one of the Republican Party's favored political "stars" to standing in line for toilet paper in a federal prison. He described his "sense of entitlement" as a political persona. "Before you know it, you're doing things you never thought you'd do in the past. ... Then you send that message to others." The former governor no doubt got the message from those who influenced him in his rise to power, including the president… books art and culture politics Susan J. Douglas Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2780/why_hemingway_is_chick_lit/ "When women stop reading, the novel will be dead," declared Ian McEwan in the Guardian last year. The British novelist reached this rather dire conclusion after venturing into a nearby park in an attempt to give away free novels. The result? Only one "sensitive male soul" took up his offer, while every woman he approached was "eager and grateful" to do the same. Unscientific as McEwan's experiment may be, its thesis is borne out by a number of surveys conducted in Britain, the United States and Canada, where men account for a paltry 20 percent of the market for fiction. Unlike the gods of the literary establishment who remain predominantly male--both as writers and critics--their humble readers are overwhelmingly female.… art and culture books gender Susan J. Douglas Thu, 24 Aug 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2775/the_true_temptations_of_the_west/ The phrase "Third World poverty," conjures up CNN-inspired images of starving, fly-infested babies clutching at their emaciated parents. This is raw human desperation that even we, in the comfort of our First-World homes, can comprehend. But what's more difficult to imagine is the fate of the other hundreds of millions in these distant countries caught right in the cusp between such disaster and survival. They are truck drivers, street vendors, house-maids, unemployed college graduates, and farmers who lead precarious, desperate lives scratching and flailing against going under in a teeming mass of humanity. Theirs is a world where success is a small step up the social ladder, achieved against enormous odds and at great expense to one's soul. Except for… books art and culture s.e. Asia Susan J. Douglas Fri, 01 Sep 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2782/plagiarists_catch_your_own_clue/ Plagiarism is on the rise--in journalism, by bestselling authors, on college campuses and online. But the one thing those of us victimized by it can't do is speak up. If we do, we are accused of "sour grapes." Occasionally, reporters who make things up (Jayson Blair) or copy from another newspaper (most recently New York Post reporter Andy Geller) do get fired or suspended for sheer fabrication or thievery. But increasingly, only the form of expression is protected: I can steal your ideas all I want as long as I put them in my own words. Educators are supposed to teach our students that intellectual theft is the worst crime they can commit in the academy, yet these same students… Art and Culture Books Susan J. Douglas Tue, 12 Sep 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2781/white_blight/ In 1957, as the civil rights movement gained steam, the conservative National Review opined: "the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary for it to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically." Why? "Because, for the time being, it is the advanced race." As the civil rights movement convinced most white Americans that this kind of in-your-face racism was wrong, conservative leaders had to find new ways to make their case. They learned to redirect the moral power of civil rights rhetoric to fight any policy that might actually yield greater equality. Today, conservatives invoke equal opportunity and the "earned" advantages that come from effort and merit,… race books Susan J. Douglas Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2789/the_prairie_populist_byron_dorgan/ North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan is a popular Democrat from a very "red" rural state. He's remained a voter favorite not because he's tried to split the difference with Republicans or suck up to the Washington power structure, but because of the populist stands embodied in his new book Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America. In the book, Dorgan takes on Washington's bipartisan consensus on trade issues, detailing how politicians of both parties are betraying ordinary Americans by pushing "free" trade pacts written by corporate lobbyists. These pacts, which polls show the public opposes, are filled with protectionist provisions for the corporations who write them and are "free" only in… politics books economy trade Susan J. Douglas Thu, 14 Sep 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2822/katrina_and_the_politics_of_disposability/ The dominant media has spent a great deal of time commenting on both the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the five-year anniversary of 9/11. Unfortunately, they have neither gone beyond conventional spin nor made much of an attempt to connect the two events, which together reveal much about the political uses of the less fortunate. The tragedy of 9/11 has been used by the Bush administration to legitimize its war on terror and the resulting massive amount of suffering, death and hardship that war imposes. The people of Iraq and the soldiers who fight there have become fodder for the neoconservative dream of a Pax Americana. The five-year anniversary of 9/11 afforded William Kristol and Rich Lowry, editors of… 9/11 media race government: administration books Susan J. Douglas Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2783/if_stone_iconic_muckracker/ In 1953, a talented but obscure journalist named I.F. Stone decided to start a newsletter allowing him to report and comment about politics, war and peace. At age 45, Stone had no reason to believe that the four-page newsletter, I.F. Stone's Weekly, would succeed financially or in any other way. Yet Stone kept the newsletter afloat for two decades and is remembered today, 17 years after his death, as an iconoclastic muckraker. In a remarkable book, Myra MacPherson reveals the real I.F. Stone. Born Isador Feinstein in 1907, he changed his name at age 20 to avoid anti-Semitism in his professional life. (Most people who knew him referred to him as just Izzy.) "All Governments Lie": The Life and Times… media activism books Susan J. Douglas Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:01:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2835/tracking_the_cia_torture_flights/ On September 6, President George W. Bush admitted that the United States detains suspected terrorists in secret CIA-run prisons in foreign countries. He announced that 14 individuals previously held in these secret jails had been transferred to the "detention facility" on Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. The president claimed that no other individuals were currently being held at these CIA "black sites," but refused to disclose the location of said jails. "Doing so would provide our enemies with information they could use to take retribution against our allies and harm our country." In their new book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, A.C. Thompson and Trevor Paglen detail how the CIA transports these "detainees" around the globe.… guantanamo criminal justice books war on terror Susan J. Douglas Mon, 09 Oct 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2848/is_diversity_enough/ The University of Illinois at Chicago, a struggling but ambitious public university in the heart of the city, celebrates its ethnically diverse student body as a great achievement. But Walter Benn Michaels, chairman of the university's English department, is unimpressed. The commitment of universities, corporations and other institutions to such diversity is "at best a distraction and at worst an essentially reactionary position," he argues in his new book, The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. Right-wing academics and pundits have built careers taking potshots at affirmative action, multiculturalism and identity politics--pursuits that some postmodern leftists see as the heart of radical politics. Michaels criticizes diversity politics from the left. His argument represents a… books race education activism Susan J. Douglas Tue, 10 Oct 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2839/the_tragedy_of_gary_webb/ With Kill the Messenger (Nation Books/Avalon), Nick Schou, an editor at Orange County Weekly, provides a meticulous, balanced account of the life of Gary Webb, the former San Jose Mercury News reporter who, despite minor errors, basically got it right when he wrote the biggest story of his career. That story lifted the rug on a historical episode the mainstream media didn't want to touch: how the Central Intelligence Agency turned a blind eye to drug dealing in furtherance of its covert support for the Nicaraguan contras. For his efforts, Webb was hounded out of journalism after a ferocious assault from America's most prestigious newspapers, which Schou documents in painstaking and shameful detail. When Webb--who had once shared a Pulitzer… activism books media drugs Susan J. Douglas