Fellow 'stoners: I believe it is agreed that Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0, originally nominated by JE, has survived the collective scrutiny of the other class members as the second text to accompany Ricci for this edition of PS460. We also have Matt Taibbi's The Derangement as a nominee, with the possibility of using the article-core written for The Rolling Stone, as a surrogate for the 360-page volume--if nominator Andrew is okay with that compromise.
Rilind's nominee or second of The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria seems to be close to a final selection too, but we'll take a few minutes to invite opposition of it exists.
Other items are awaiting more aggressive endorsement, and these include Dryzek's Democracy in Capitalist Times, a volume I nominated on the degradation of our politics to zombie-like spectacles, and ,now, the new volume by Jeremy Rivkin, The Age of Empathy, which has been recognized as the Huffington Post's book of the month.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/04/empathic-civilization-exc_n_448475.html. It is a "big book" -- in argument and in literal length at 700 pages -- and will likely affect thinking about politics in the future for quite awhile. But it too has a core-article summary, published in The Huffington Post, which might be a proactical cocnession like the Taibbi volume.
We need to be thinking about writing -- assorted and diverse projects, including posts here on the Blog are usually more attractive than a giant term paper -- after the Ricci reviews coming up a week from now. So if you get ideas on any of the foregoing, doesn't hesitate to weigh in on these pages so we can save class time.
Ulak wadoo,
dt
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I'm completely OK with finding the chapter online, I read the same type of reviews at Amazon about that part being better than the rest, and I think it appeared in Rolling Stone as an essay by itself.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link to the excerpt:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alternet.org/story/84043/an_atheist_goes_undercover_to_join_the_flock_of_mad_pastor_john_hagee/
Hmm, after skimming over it, as enjoyable as it is, it doesn't have a whole lot to do with politics per se. So i'm not sure what to do with it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not personally worried about a politics per se litmus test. The title -- "The Derangement" -- is intended as a commentary on our public life and our politics as out of whack, deranged, messed up, loopy, etc. I'll take a look at the AlterNet version; are you sure it's the same version as appeared in the Rolling Stone? Or is it so excerpted that the narrative is stripped of its engaging essence?
ReplyDelete