February 2010 Acquisitions

Books:
Brian Azzarello et al, 100 Bullets, Vol. 1: First Shot, Last Call, 2000.
Peter Bagge, Buddy Does Jersey, 2007.
Bernadine Bailey, Malawi in Pictures, 1973.
Bernadine Bailey, Rhodesia in Pictures, 1973.
James M. Banner, Jr. (ed.), A Century of American Historiography, 2010.
Jules R. Benjamin, A Student's Guide to History, 2010.
François Cusset, French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States, 2008.
Peter English, South Africa in Pictures, 1975.
Epictetus, Enchiridion: The Stoic's Manual for Living, 2007.
Walter L. Hixson, Charles A. Lindbergh: Lone Eagle, 2007.
Robert D. Marcus et al., America Firsthand, Volume 1, 2010.
Robert D. Marcus et al., America Firsthand, Volume 2, 2010.
Mark Millar et al, Superman: Red Son, 2004.
Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, 2010.
James L. Roark et al., The American Promise: A Compact History, Volume 1, 2010.
James L. Roark et al., The American Promise: A Compact History, Volume 2, 2010.
Jane & Michael Stern, The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, 1990.
Adrian Tomine, Summer Blonde, 2003.
Allan M. Winkler, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Making of Modern America, 2006.
J. William T. Youngs, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life, 2006.
Warren Zanes, Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis, 2003.
Lýdia Verona Zemba, Ghana in Pictures, 1973.

DVDs:
Greetings, 1968.
Margot at the Wedding, 2007.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988.

So While You're Imitating Al Capone

"Her reputation as mercurial, moody and combative was well established, and she did little to dispel this image in her memoir, 'I Put a Spell on You.' She was nothing if not paradoxical. She promoted black militancy and spoke of her love for 'my people,' but often treated black audiences with contempt and condescension. She beat up white audiences, too, sometimes declaring her disdain for white people, and yet sustained a substantial crossover following with covers of songs associated with their youth culture. She might show up an hour or two late, ramble incoherently onstage and suddenly give a performance that could bring a weary crowd to tears."

In The New York Times, Robin D. G. Kelley reviews Nadine Cohodas's Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone.

Going for Gold

"It included calories per day determined from the 2009 Statistical Yearbook from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; and television viewing, taken from combined data from the OECD Society at a Glance 2009 and OECD Communications Outlook 2009.
"Also used as a measure: a country’s aversion to sports, as tracked by the OECD Society at a Glance 2009; and Internet usage, with average hours per capita for December 2009 from data provided by ComScore."

Debra Black in The Toronto Star reports that the United States is the winner of the "Couch Potato Olympics," according to The Daily Beast.

Another Great Big Pool Beside It

"I think people are extremely sensitive to status differentiation and to being looked down on, or disrespected, and those often seem to be the triggers to violence. We quote an American prison psychiatrist who goes so far as to say he’s never seen a serious act of violence that wasn’t provoked by loss of face or humiliation, and so on. And in more unequal societies, status matters even more."

Jenna Russell in The Boston Globe interviews Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.

Looking for the Perfect Afrobeat

"Opening with a spacey duet between Fela on keyboards and powerhouse drummer Tony Allen that sounds like an outtake from Miles Davis' electric period, the title track is a mercilessly funky, 25-minute journey. Yet even as Fela decries Nigeria's post-colonial plight in a mix of pidgin English and West African Yoruba, the song never loses track of its central mission to move bodies as well as minds."

Chris Barton in the Los Angeles Times claims that "2010 might be the year of Fela" Kuti.

Which One's Pink?

"In America the rules were as certain as they were contradictory. When Meg's twins, Daisy and Demi, are born in Little Women, sister Amy follows the French tradition, putting a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl.* Ladies' Home Journal flatly contradicted this notion in 1918: 'The generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.'"

Jude Stewart in Slate presents a brief history of a controversial color.

"Obama's Embarrassing Ska Album Resurfaces"

From The Onion.

"I Am in Control Here"

"Mr. Haig was a rare American breed: a political general. His bids for the presidency quickly came undone. But his ambition to be president was thinly veiled, and that was his undoing. He knew, Reagan’s aide Lyn Nofziger once said, that 'the third paragraph of his obit' would detail his conduct in the hours after President Reagan was shot, on March 30, 1981."

Tim Weiner in The New York Times reports the death of Alexander Haig.

A Literary Greatest Generation?

"Updike, in that last interview, reflected on having twice been pictured on the cover of Time magazine, part of the nation's honours system, to mark the publication of Couples in 1968 and Rabbit Is Rich in 1982. Now, the novelist who takes that prize is Dan Brown. And so the changing of the guard in American fiction is arguably not just generational but cultural: the large, interested readership who lined their shelves with Updike's Rabbit Quartet, Bellow's Herzog, Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and other bestsellers of serious literary merit had perhaps migrated to the quick-read thriller and the confessional memoir."

Mark Lawson in The Guardian argues that America's best authors were those "born in the 1910s, 20s and 30s."

"Promises to Speak Volumes"

"But as you enter the 1960s, you see the Los Angeles art scene take root, and you discover one of the reasons it remains so vital today: Many of its most inventive pioneers are still alive and active. Robert Irwin (now in San Diego), John Baldessari (still in Santa Monica) and Ed Ruscha (long in Venice Beach), for example, are well represented in the show, each appearing at multiple junctions.
"'I think you will see as the exhibition progresses the growing impact of L.A. artists internationally,' Mr. Schimmel said. 'What begins as a sprinkling becomes by the end a dominant force.'"

In a September 2009 New York Times, Jori Finkel reviews "Collection" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Stay Classy, UC San Diego

"History professor Danny Widener, who directs the university's African American studies program, said he was outraged but not surprised by the party. He said African American students comprise less than 2% of undergraduates at UC San Diego, which he described as inhospitable to them.
"'The campus climate is one in which you are constantly regarded as a statistical anomaly at best,' he said."

Larry Gordon in the Los Angeles Times reports on anger over a racist party near the University of California, San Diego.

Addendum:
Two years later, Tony Perry in the Los Angeles Times discusses the end of a federal investigation at the university.

In This Time of Moral and Political Crises

"The Mount Vernon Statement reads like a document stuck in the Sixties: 'America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics.' There is not the slightest hint or acknowledgement that conservatives had any part in this undermining or redefining. Nothing about people posing as conservatives being responsible for a brutal empire that straddles the world, the bankrupting of the nation to pay for this empire, the justification of torture at home and abroad, an imperial presidency, the evisceration of the Tenth Amendment, you name it."

David Franke of The American Conservative compares the Young Americans for Freedom Sharon Statement of 1960 with the recently issued Mount Vernon Statement.

"U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion"

"'I've spent 25 years in this room yelling "Buy, buy! Sell, sell!" and for what?' longtime trader Michael Palermo said. 'All I've done is move arbitrary designations of wealth from one column to another, wasting my life chasing this unattainable hallucination of wealth.'
"'What a cruel cosmic joke,' he added. 'I'm going home to hug my daughter.'"

From The Onion.

"Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will"

"The review was founded in 1960 out of a merger of two existing journals, Universities and Left Review and the New Reasoner, the former representing an upsurge of political and cultural radicalism in the late 1950s, especially strong in universities, that repudiated the reformism of the Labour party, while the latter provided a rallying ground for those communists and ex-communists who, post-1956, disowned orthodox Stalinism. New Left clubs were formed around the country, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament provided a mobilising and unifying focus. For a brief period, the review was part of a wider movement. But after the 1962 changeover, it focused more exclusively on preparing the theoretical ground for 'revolution' (it can be hard now to remember what an everyday term 'revolution' was in the 1960s and 1970s)."

Stefan Collini in The Guardian marks the fiftieth anniversary of New Left Review.

And in NLR, Stuart Hall traces the journal's origins.

Oh Say That You'll Be True

"The record failed to sell, and label owner Leonard Chess had reservations about releasing Mr. Hawkins's second record, 'Susie Q.' But a local disc jockey took a demo of the song to Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler expressed interest in it, forcing Chess's hand.
"Mr. Hawkins had to assign part of the song's writing credits to Lewis and E. Broadwater, a pseudonym for Nashville DJ Gene Nobles. The move ensured airplay but caused him to miss out on royalty payments."

Terence McArdle in The Washington Post reports the death of Dale Hawkins.

"Perhaps the Greatest Magazine Writer that No One Knows About"

"For a man with an almost embarrassingly patrician name (he was of Scottish descent), McKelway found his métier in the tenement backrooms and police stations of the city. He produced long profiles of the cunning crooks he lovingly called 'rascals' as well as of the men who worked hard to bring them to justice. At a time when the New Yorker's fiction writers were producing quaint doily-and-tea-cozy sketches of domestic life, McKelway delved into the marrow of the lower class. His dispatches read like character-driven short stories from the underworld."

In the Los Angeles Times, Marc Weingarten reviews Reporting at Wit's End: Tales From the New Yorker by St. Clair McKelway.

Lil' Presidents

"Future presidents are wise beyond their years, not disturbingly anti-social."

Cate Plys and Robert Leighton in Slate compare presidential biographies for children and adults.

Spirit of the Game

"In 1937, Fred attended a picnic held by the family of his girlfriend, Lucile Nay, known as Lu. Before long, the fateful popcorn lid was thrown. The young couple soon discovered that Fred’s mother’s metal pie tins were far more durable. Mrs. Morrison’s reaction is not recorded."

Margalit Fox in The New York Times writes an obit for Fred Morrison, inventor of the Frisbee.

The Neophiliacs

"The generation settled happily into two camps on the matter. One held that the post-Beveridge 'nanny state' had stifled initiative and entrepreneurship and that the Attlee settlement was a disaster. The other held that Attlee had not gone far enough and had unforgivably blown the chance to create the socialist nirvana: the Attlee settlement was a disaster. Beveridge, they pointed out sniffily, was a Liberal.
"What united the baby boomers was that almost none of them learned to value the extraordinary legacy they had. None of them fought to protect it, and today most of them sneer at it, either from the left or from the right."

Francis Beckett in New Statesman ponders the political consequence of British baby boomers.

"They Do Not Have to Compromise Their Rights for a Paycheck"

"'Guest workers are too often seen as disposable workers who can be cheated and exploited,' SPLC attorney Jim Knoepp said. 'This settlement sends a powerful message that these workers have rights and that their employers will be held accountable.'"

Chuck Bartles of the Associated Press reports via ABC News of a class-action lawsuit settlement to pay migrant workers in the south nearly three million dollars in back wages.

"NASA Launches David Bowie Concept Mission"

"While the mission will primarily study paranoia, decadence, and the fluidity of sexual identity in a zero-gravity environment, additional scientific testing will be conducted during the shuttle's 14-day orbit of Earth.
"'One of the experiments we're most excited about will address the effects of Mars-like conditions on several different species of arachnids,' NASA biologist Norman Stern said."

From The Onion.

Never Again?

"When the spirit of rebellion seized Germany’s youth in the late 1960s, it therefore took an extreme form. Many young people discerned a strong continuity—material, ideological, even spiritual— between the apparatus of the Third Reich and the present-day Federal Republic. Nourishing this perception were the theories promoted by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, the aging representatives of the Institute for Social Research who had returned to Frankfurt from their American exile. For the Frankfurt School theorists, fascism was not merely a socio-political affliction particular to a certain time and place; it was a general pathology of modernity and Western industrial capitalism. Student radicals took this analysis to heart and were primed to see Nazism everywhere. 'Anti-fascism' seemed to demand a wholesale rejection of contemporary society."

Peter E. Gordon in The New Republic reviews Hans Kundnani's Utopia or Auschwitz: Germany's 1968 Generation and the Holocaust.

All Available Light

Life magazine reveals previously unpublished photographs of Marilyn Monroe at an awards dinner in 1952.

"Thoughtful Nation Questioning Whether Anyone Can Really 'Win' The Super Bowl"

"'Name one absolute thing that makes one team a Super Bowl winner and the other a loser besides the score,' Colts fan Gary Lam said. 'You can't. It's all relative. They both play in the same game for the same amount of time in the same sport after playing the same number of games. Any differences, such as how many times one team gets the ball to a certain area or propels it through the uprights, are relatively minor. Saying that scoring fewer points is what makes a loser is disingenuous.'
"'The Cowboys scored more points than the other team in quite a few Super Bowls, but they were huge losers,' Lam added. 'And still are.'"

From The Onion.

Big Babies

The usual way to describe such inconsistent demands from voters is to say that the public is an angry, populist, tea-partying mood. But a lot more people are watching American Idol than are watching Glenn Beck, and our collective illogic is mostly negligent rather than militant. The more compelling explanation is that the American public lives in Candyland, where government can tackle the big problems and get out of the way at the same time. In this respect, the whole country is becoming more and more like California, where ignorance is bliss and the state's bonds have dropped to an A- rating (the same level as Libya's), thanks to a referendum system that allows the people to be even more irresponsible than their elected representatives. Middle-class Americans really don't want to hear about sacrifices or trade-offs—except as flattering descriptions about how ready we, as a people, are, or used to be, to accept them. We like the idea of hard choices in theory. When was the last time we made one in reality?

Jacob Weisberg in Slate criticizes American voters for current political and economic problems.

"Alzheimer's Disease Causing Baby Boomers To Misremember 1960s Even More"

"'We're seeing men and women who have spent so much of their lives misremembering the past grow even more detached from reality,' said neuroanatomist Dr. Arthur Rothensen, who conducted the study. 'This terrible disease has made thousands of boomers' memories of the 1960s almost completely unreliable and fragmented. And we're talking about people who, even before they contracted Alzheimer's, believed they single-handedly ended the war in Vietnam.'
"Added Rothensen, 'It's just sad, really.'"

From The Onion.

"A Leap of Faith"

"We want to believe theories that contradict the idea that young, iconic people died senselessly. If a story takes away the accidental from their death, it gives them agency. After the JFK assassination, it was unbearable to many people that they could live in a country where a lone gunman could kill a president. In those circumstances, it’s not surprising that an overarching conspiracy theory emerges. It suggests that somebody is in control, rather than that we’re at the mercy of our neighbors and to some extent of ourselves (as was the case with Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana). It’s the urge to make sense of a particularly traumatic moment."

In Salon, Thomas Rogers interviews David Aaronovitch, author of Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.

"Sortez les sortants"

"France’s woes, he declared, were due to an urbane and urban professional class that had 'lost all contact with the real world.' In his autobiography, titled 'I’ve Chosen to Fight,' Poujade styled himself as a simple man of the people who had entered politics for selfless and patriotic reasons.
"The real France, he insisted, was found not in Paris, but in small towns and on farms. It was certainly not found in the person of France’s most promising politician, Pierre Mendès-France, who as prime minister had acted on many of his campaign promises for meaningful economic and political change. For Poujade, the young and cerebral Mendès-France, a Sephardic Jew whose family had lived in France for several generations, was and would always be a foreigner."

Robert Zaretsky in The New York Times revisits the the Poujadist movement in 1950s French politics.

"Experiments Belong in the Laboratory"

"It appears that Pei's uncompromising minimalist design pushed construction technology beyond its capacity. Such failures are not unheard of in modern architecture. Buildings sometimes fail because of incompetence or shoddy workmanship, but the examples that follow failed for a different reason."

Witold Rybczynski in Slate discusses "ambitious architectural failures."

"The Shock Troops of the Civil Rights Movement"

"What seems remarkable in retrospect is the factual authority of network news in those days. Dixie’s politicians, of course, accused the national anchors of bias. But the pictures trumped the home-cooked propaganda, as when you put a spittle-spraying Southern governor up against a Greensboro Four leader like Franklin McCain, in his earnest Sunday clothes, offering a cogent critique of Woolworth’s Southern business strategy as it related to black shoppers nationwide. It took only one national telecast of Nashville students being assaulted at the lunch counters to demonstrate that segregation everywhere depended on the unconstitutional application of police brutality."

In The New York Times, Howell Raines marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-ins.