INTERESTING READS » NR

‘First editions, second thoughts’, interactive, Guardian

NR — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:08:58 +0000

A sample of handwritten annotations of their own first editions by Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, John Banville, Kazuo Ishiguro, Nadine Gordimer, Ian McEwen, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Yann Martel, J.K. Rowling, Ian Rankin, and other writers. The books soon go to auction at Sotheby’s in aid of English Pen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2013/may/17/first-editions-auction-in-pictures#/?picture=409042326&index=4

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2013/may/18/jk-rowling-first-editions-annotation

Conducting from a wheelchair: James Levine at Carnegie Hall, NYT

NR — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:33:16 +0000

‘After years of spinal problems, shoulder injuries and multiple operations, it seemed very possible that [James] Levine — one of the greatest living American conductors and a musician who has defined the Metropolitan Opera for more than 40 years — might never return to performing…[His] return was a triumph.’

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/arts/music/james-levine-returns-to-the-podium-at-carnegie-hall.html?hp&_r=0

‘Betrayed by the Human Rights Community’, David Cronin in Counterpunch

NR — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:19:31 +0000

‘Bradley Manning…[who] has been in detention for three years now, without having been convicted of any crime…has been let down by those who claim to defend human rights [the EU and Amnesty International, among them]. The silence over his treatment must be broken.’

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/16/european-silence-over-bradley-manning/

Unburied: Tamerlan Tsarnaev and The Lessons of Greek Tragedy: The New Yorker

NR — Sun, 19 May 2013 03:26:35 +0000

‘”Bury this terrorist on U.S. soil and we will unbury him.” So ran the bitter slogan…A legal no-man’s land, perhaps, but familiar territory to anyone even casually acquainted with the Greek classics.’

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/05/unburied-tamerlan-tsarvaev-and-the-lessons-of-greek-tragedy.html

Obama vs. The Press, The New Yorker

NR — Sun, 19 May 2013 02:59:54 +0000

‘This is an Administration that is uncommonly touchy about government officials who leak to the press, even as, like all governments, it engages in strategic or self-aggrandizing leaks on a regular basis.’

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/05/how-obama-harms-the-press.html

‘Pakistan Elections: Democracy, Dichotomies, and Shades of Grey’, Beena Sarwar in EPW

NR — Sat, 18 May 2013 11:07:01 +0000

‘The recent elections in Pakistan show that the country is finally on the right track notwithstanding the rigging, the violence and the brutal prevention of women from voting in some areas by representatives of all the political parties. The huge turnout of women and first-time young voters risking their lives to exercise their right to choose is something to celebrate and strengthen…’

http://www.epw.in/web-exclusives/pakistan-elections-democracy-dichotomies-and-shades-grey.html

‘The Collapse of Journalism and the Journalism of Collapse’, Robert Jensen in Nation of Change

NR — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:21:41 +0000

‘For those who believe that a robust public-affairs journalism is essential for a society striving to be democratic, the 21st century has been characterized by bad news that keeps getting worse.’

http://www.nationofchange.org/collapse-journalism-and-journalism-collapse-royal-prophetic-apocalyptic-1368799018

‘Rajat Gupta’s Lust for Zeros’ by Anita Raghavan, NYT Magazine, adapted from her forthcoming book, ‘The Billionaire’s Apprentice’

NR — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:28:49 +0000

‘While Gupta departed McKinsey with a fortune, he was now mingling with a crowd that included Bill Gates, Henry Kravis and Henry M. Paulson Jr…he had to be a billionaire…Whether Gupta’s charge is overturned or not, he will still be remembered as the dignified McKinsey managing director who fell down the money trap and under the spell of a boorish hedge-fund trader, a reality which, in his world, is almost as damaging as the crime he stands accused of committing.’

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/rajat-guptas-lust-for-zeros.html?hp&_r=1&pagewanted=all&

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/06/steve-cohen-insider-trading-case

‘Speed Kills: Can Journalism save itself?’, George Packer in New Yorker

NR — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:13:39 +0000

‘It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the media, social and mainstream. The Boston Marathon bombing brought out the best in some newspapers…but the story also highlighted the worst tendencies of media new and old.’

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/04/speed-kills-journalism-social-media-and-the-markets.html

RAS | Agricultural Signs in the Indus Script, Iravatham Mahadevan

NR — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:28:11 +0000

‘Abstract: The Indus script possessed a set of signs referring to crop and share of the agricultural produce (Chart I). Five hierarchical levels of levies on the produce have been identified, namely, those due to god, state, city, land owner, and the tenant-farmer. Survivals of the agricultural signs in the Indus script as pottery graffiti in later periods are illustrated in Chart II. A list of signs of the Indus script depicting agricultural implements is also included (Chart III).’

http://www.ras.org.in/agricultural_signs_in_the_indus_script

RAS | Adivasi Songs from Odisha

NR — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:26:25 +0000

‘The Review of Agrarian Studies is happy to present, for the first time, a multimedia feature. This is a field report of a different kind: the farm and other rural songs featured here are from a project to archive the songs of the Adivasi people of Odisha.’

http://www.ras.org.in/adivasi_songs_from_odisha

‘The Great Divide: No Rich Child Left Behind’, Sean F. Reardon, professor of education and sociology at Stanford, NYT

NR — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:41:49 +0000

‘Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families…It is true in most societies and it has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer…this is hardly news…What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.’ Do we ask this key question in India and have sufficient data to verify the answers?

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind/?hp

‘Gina Rinehart, Australia’s Mining Billionaire’, William Finnegan in The New Yorker

NR — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 09:02:32 +0000

‘For billionaires who cannot buy good press, there is the option of buying the press.’ The Editor of a western newspaper recently remarked that Australia’s far-Right billionaire, Gina Rinehart, makes Rupert Murdoch seem ‘left-wing’. Read on:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/03/25/130325fa_fact_finnegan?currentPage=all

Pope Francis and the Dirty War, posted by Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker

NR — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:10:59 +0000

‘Whatever the truth, [Pope] Francis the Humble, it would seem, has much to clear up about what he thought, how he behaved, and what he did during his country’s Dirty War’, the anti-Communist reign of terror by the military junta (1976-1983).

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/03/pope-francis-jorge-bergoglio-argentina-dirty-war.html

‘New Pope’s role during Argentina’s military era disputed’, Jonathan Watts and Uki Goni, Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/15/pope-francis-argentina-military-era

What a fall for a senior Cardinal, who admits and apologises for a career of sexual misconduct, Guardian & NYT

NR — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 03:33:20 +0000

‘There have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal’ — Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s senior-most Catholic cleric

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/03/cardinal-keith-obrien-admits-sexual-misconduct

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/world/europe/cardinal-keith-obrien-acknowledges-sexual-misconduct.html?hp&_r=0

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/04/scottish-catholic-obrien-scandal-authority

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_O’Brien

Statement:

http://www.scmo.org/articles/statement-from-cardinal-obrien.html

‘Cardinal Keith O’Brien: how Britain’s Catholic leader fell from grace’, Catherine Deveney, The Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/02/cardinal-keith-obrien-sex-scandal-priests

‘O’Brien priest worries that church wants to ”crush” him’, Catherine Deveney, The Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/02/obrien-priest-catholic-church

‘Unfit for purpose and in denial: a church that has lost all authority’, Kevin McKenna, The Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/02/ordinary-catholics-deserve-an-answer

‘Think New York Is Costly? In New Delhi, Seedy Goes for 8 Figures’, Jim Yardley in NYT

NR — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 05:02:23 +0000

What makes real estate prices ‘in the heart of New Delhi…among the highest in the world’? Some insights into the conundrum:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/world/asia/new-delhi-bungalows-even-in-disrepair-command-millions.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all

The limits of papal power: uncertainties after Benedict XVI’s troubled reign, Daniel J. Wakin, NYT

NR — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 04:51:15 +0000

What lies ahead for a deeply troubled, scandal-ridden Catholic Church with a worldwide following of 1.17 billion people — after a reactionary Pope stepped down, acting ‘like the CEO of a company’?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/world/europe/benedicts-decision-may-affect-future-popes-terms.html?pagewanted=2&hpw&pagewanted=all

‘The Catholic Church Shifted Southward Over the Past Century’, NYT graphic:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/11/world/europe/the-catholic-church-shifted-southward-over-the-past-century.html?hp

On the same page: the satirist and the comedian, Tom Kington in Guardian

NR — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 03:43:57 +0000

‘Grillo is like a character in one of my plays…He is from that school of medieval minstrels who played with paradox and the absurd’ — Nobel Prize-winning playwright Dario Fo on ‘what makes Beppe Grillo tick…after a quarter of Italians voted for his brand of populist insurgency in last week’s general election’:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/02/beppe-grillo-dario-fo-italy

Is it possible to like Milton? Colin Burrow in the London Review of Books (LRB), March 7, 2013

NR — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:37:05 +0000

Is it possible to like John Milton (1608-1674), the poet and secretary for foreign languages in Oliver Cromwell’s revolutionary Commonwealth of England? Conceding that there’s ‘certainly a great deal to dislike’ and that ‘most people would think of him as an overlearned poet who combines labyrinthine syntax with a wide range of moral and intellectual vices’, Colin Burrow argues in this critical review of three new books that ‘to like Milton we really need to go right back to the beginning’, to the wonderful early poems. ‘One good reason for liking Milton’, he explains, is that ‘he was never entirely predictable…Learning to hear how hard Milton is working in these early poems is a big part of learning not just how to like but (for me anyway) to love the cussed old so and so.’

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n05/colin-burrow/shall-i-go-on?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3505&hq_e=el&hq_m=2331467&hq_l=5&hq_v=dd506eda91

‘Royal Bodies’, Hilary Mantel’s LRB lecture at the British Museum

NR — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:10:22 +0000

Don’t miss this beautifully crafted — learned, witty, funny, ironic, wise — meditation on what royalty, past and present, has meant to the wider public. From Ann Boleyn through Marie Antoinette to Diana and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, the finest living exponent of the historical novel has their measure. The podcast and the edited text of the lecture are freely accessible at the London Review of Books website:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

‘Hilary Mantel v the Duchess of Cambridge: a story of lazy journalism and raging hypocrisy’, Hadley Freeman in The Guardian

On the banality of the latest tabloid outrage and David Cameron, in a Pavlovian response from India, ‘putting in his tuppence’ against a lecture he has probably not read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/hilary-mantel-duchess-cambridge-scandal

‘Hilary Mantel: why novelists are deliberately misunderstood’, Sam Leith in The Guardian

On how irony is incomprehensible or worse to tabloids & others who ‘deal in templates and received ideas…pretty princesses, snooty highbrow authors, smirking fiends and tragic tots’:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2013/feb/19/hilary-mantel-duchess-of-cambridge-controversy

‘The Disastrous Influence of Pope Benedict XVI’, John Cassidy and Jane Kramer in The New Yorker

NR — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 10:30:37 +0000

‘By setting its face against the modern world in general, and by dragging its feet in response to one of the worst scandals since the Reformation, Benedict’s Vatican has called the Church’s future into question, needlessly alienating countless people around the world who were brought up in its teachings.’

‘The Disastrous Influence of Pope Benedict XVI’, John Cassidy:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/02/good-riddance-to-pope-benedict-he-was-a-disaster.html#e

‘What The Pope Can Pray For’, Jane Kramer:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/02/what-the-pope-can-pray-for.html

Behind the ‘Pre-meditated Murder’ of Reeva Steenkamp: The Dark Side of Oscar Pistorius and Celebrity Worship

NR — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 08:27:40 +0000

‘The Fast Life of Oscar Pistorius’, Michael Sokolove in The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/magazine/oscar-pistorius.html?ref=sports&pagewanted=all

‘Oscar Pistorius: South Africa’s symbol of hope shattered’, Donald McRae in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/feb/15/oscar-pistorius-south-africa-shattered

‘Reeva Steenkamp’s corpse was in the morgue, her body was on the Sun’s front page’, Marina Hyde in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/15/reeva-steenkamp-body-on-front-page

‘Pistorius, His Girlfriend, and His Gun’, Amy Davidson in The New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/02/oscar-pistorius-his-girlfriend-and-his-gun.html

Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the poet’s last days, BBC News

NR — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:10:31 +0000

In February 1963, American poet Sylvia Plath, struggling to cope with her abandonment by Ted Hughes, killed herself in her flat in London. Writer Jillian Becker, whom Sylvia befriended during the last months of her life, relives their last days together.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21336933

Parking lot fit for a King: Researchers confirm skeletal remains of Richard III

NR — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:13:34 +0000

‘In one of Britain’s most dramatic modern archaeological finds, researchers…announced…that skeletal remains found under a parking lot in this English Midlands city [Leicester] were those of King Richard III, for centuries the most widely reviled of English monarchs, paving the way for a possible reassessment of his brief but violent reign.’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/04/richard-iii-dna-bones-king?intcmp=122

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/feb/04/richard-iii-skeleton-last-plantagenet-king-live

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/world/europe/richard-the-third-bones.html?hp&_r=0

Richard III: Play by Shakespeare (‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse’):

http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-king-richard-iii.htm

‘My Kingdom for a Corpse’, Gail Collins in NYT (don’t miss the comments at the end of this article):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/opinion/collins-my-kingdom-for-a-corpse.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0

William Z. Foster’s ‘History of the Communist Party of the United States’, 1952, valuable online resource

NR — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:53:17 +0000

Here, accessible as a free online resource, is William Z. Foster’s History of the Communist Party of the United States, New York (1952: International Publishers, New York). It has 38 chapters plus an Appendix, Index & Partial Bibliography. Published in 1952, it covers a pre-history beginning with the American Revolution and early American class struggles and a little-known but stirring history coming up to the mid-twentieth century.

http://williamzfoster.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1

Note: All chapters are available at this link. Click to the next chapter at the link provided at the end of each chapter (until you come to the Appendix, Index & Partial Bibliography).

Courtesy: For a People’s Democracy (monthly bulletin): forapeoplesdemocracy.wordpress.com

‘In the Dairy Case, Ripe Prose’, NYT

NR — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 04:05:17 +0000

Cheese-mongers as creative writers? Yes, ‘some of the most amusing and captivating writing’ in New York is being produced ‘in the service of cheese’:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/dining/creative-cheesemongers-pen-clever-descriptions.html?hp&pagewanted=all

‘Battles of the Budget’, Paul Krugman, NYT

NR — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 04:08:48 +0000

‘In a tactical sense the fiscal cliff ended in a modest victory for the White House’ — but ‘progressives’ must beware of what is to come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/opinion/kurgman-battles-of-the-budget.html?hp&_r=0

‘The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins, Pickpocket’, Adam Green in The New Yorker

NR — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 04:41:31 +0000

In magic circles, Robbins is regarded as a kind of legend. Psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and the military study his methods for what they reveal about the nature of human attention.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/07/130107fa_fact_green?currentPage=all

‘America’s Retreat from the Death Penalty’, NYT

NR — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 03:14:46 +0000

There’s absolutely no rational or evidence-backed justification for retaining capital punishment. Here’s a US update:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/opinion/americas-retreat-from-the-death-penalty.html?hp

‘The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln’, historian Eric Foner in NYT

NR — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 03:59:31 +0000

Abraham Lincoln’s original solution for ending slavery, which be believed to be wrong, was far from radical and badly compromised. ‘Emancipation would be undertaken by state governments, with national financing. It would be gradual, owners would receive monetary compensation and emancipated slaves would be encouraged to find a homeland outside the United States — this last idea known as “colonization.”’ But the slave holders were defiant. Lincoln also took his plan to black Americans, saying slavery was ‘the greatest wrong inflicted on any people’ but qualifying this with the prescription that because of racism, blacks would never achieve equality in America and ‘it is better for us both, therefore, to be separated’. He even seemed to hold black Americans accountable for the Civil War. ‘He had long seen blacks as an alien people who had been unjustly uprooted from their homeland and were entitled to freedom, but were not an intrinsic part of American society. During his Senate campaign in Illinois, in 1858, he had insisted that blacks should enjoy the same natural rights as whites (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), but he opposed granting them legal equality or the right to vote.’ But all this was to change profoundly and ‘the hallmark of Lincoln’s greatness was his combination of bedrock principle with open-mindedness and capacity for growth’. The Emancipation Proclamation, which he signed on January 1, 1863, ‘embodied a double emancipation: for the slaves, since it ensured that if the Union emerged victorious, slavery would perish, and for Lincoln himself, for whom it marked the abandonment of his previous assumptions about how to abolish slavery and the role blacks would play in post-emancipation American life’. Read this nuanced critical assessment in the New York Times by Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University and author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2011: W.W. Norton & Company, New York). For those who wish to explore this subject further, Richard Hofstadter’s essay, ‘Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth’ in The American Political Tradition And The Men Who Made It (1948, 1989: Vintage Books Edition, Random House, New York) provides an interesting perspective.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/the-emancipation-of-abe-lincoln.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0&pagewanted=all

http://www.ericfoner.com